‘IT MEANT SOMETHING TO BE ON THE COVER’
Ebony magazine gave a voice and lens to Black America
CharlesWhitaker, dean at theMedill School of Journalism at NorthwesternUniversity, says Ebony magazine is largely why he became a journalist. When as a young student he had to do a report based on a periodical, he chose Ebony because it “was on every Black coffee table growing up” in the 1960s.
“My reportwas based on a story by Charles Sanders who once upon a timewas the Paris bureau chief of Ebony,” Whitaker said. “Itwas all about Black expatriates living in Paris, and I thought, ‘Howcool is that?’ You could actually write and go to cool places and interview interesting people. That’s what I wanted to do— thatwasmy inspiration for being a journalist.”
Much like Bibles have been a mainstay in hotels and motels across America, sowas Ebony magazine when it came to Black homes and businesses. If you’re of a certain age, the Chicago-based publicationwas just a constant. One never questioned its presence.
The monthly publication— focused like Life magazine on showing American lives— chronicled the achievements of those in the Black community andwas a success from its first issue published onNov. 1, 1945, by founder John H. Johnson. The 25,000-copy press run of the inaugural 52-page issue sold out. By its 10th year, the magazinewas being read by 500,000 people.
By 1965, the press runwas 900,000, and the average issue was 169 pages. Readership surveys showed that in Black communities, Ebony outsold other publications of the same type 15 to 1. By 1967, the publication would end the year with advertising revenue of more than $7million, with a guaranteed circulation of 1 million.
Johnson sawEbony’s role as a way “to portray the positive side ofNegro life because he believed that every man must have a wholesome self-image before he is prepared to demand respect fromothers,” the Tribune wrote.
“We try to present the good things thatNegroes are doing, with emphasis on what can be done, not on the handicaps, in a lively colorfulway that appeals to our readers,” Johnson said.
The Ebony story began when a 25-year-old Johnson borrowed $500 in 1942 using his mother’s furniture as collateral to start his
first publication, Negro Digest— a periodical that informed readers about Black people fighting in WorldWar II. While the digest would not stay, it served as the foundation for Ebony and the Johnson Publishing Co. Periodicalswould ebb and flowunder the Johnson Publishing banner— the news digest Jet and Ebony Jr! for 6- to 12-year-olds— but Ebony magazine remained the flagship publication.
By 1972, Johnson Publishing would be headquartered in its own now-landmarked building at 820 S. Michigan Ave. The modernist 11-story building, the first and only high-rise in downtown Chicago designed by an African American, was a touchstone for the Black community, much like Ebonywas, and it attracted dignitaries and history-makers.
“They used to do these tours for schoolchildren, and two years after Ebony’s new building had openedmy freshman class in high schoolwent down there,” Whitaker recalled. “Itwas this gleaming monument to African American achievement on Michigan Avenue. … Everyone from the person who greeted you at the door to John Johnsonwas African American, and thatwas thiswonderful, inspirational experience.”
Whitakerwould eventually serve as an Ebony editor for close to 10 years handling politics, culture andworld affairs. Joining the ranks of Ebony gave him a feeling of having arrived, he said. Traveling to South Africa with Coretta Scott King andMaya Angelou and other Black civil rights leaders, interviewing trailblazing Black mayors between 1985 and 1992, sitting at a luncheon with novelist James Baldwin, thiswas the norm at Ebony.
“That kind of stuffwould happen all the time, and itwas kind of amagical place to be because of that,” Whitaker said. “I traveled to four continents and met with heads of state. … The opportunities that it afforded me, this little, working-class kid from the South Side of Chicago, were phenomenal.”
Thatwas the thing about Ebony— every month, it showed readers ofmy community ourselves. Johnson Publishing provided us with a windowfor viewing the greatness and legacy of our people. Young and old from different communitieswould discuss Ebony’s articles with one another. Ebonywas like television
before streaming: Itwas mustsee, must-read and must-share.
“If you called most Black people and said youwere fromEbony andwanted to do a story on them, they kind of dropped everything,” Whitaker said. “It meant something to be on the cover.”
Ebony writes “with a candor that the white press has generally shunned,” the Tribune observed in 1979 while discussing a special Ebony issue about black-on-black crime. Johnson and his staff weighed in on the issues that affected and reflected on the community— fromBlack people in media and entertainment to the real buying power that members of the community possessed; fromongoing concerns like poverty in Black neighborhoods to the development of the Black child, the special focus of a 1974 issue.
In 1975, Ebony tapped a multitude of expert voices for its August issue “The Bicentennial: 200 Years of Black Trials and Triumphs,” wherein senior editor Lerone Bennett Jr. wrote: “There has never been a better opportunity or better time” for Black people “to remind white Americans thatwe are not free.” There are echoes of that sentiment in TheNewYork Times’ recent undertaking “The 1619 Project.”
Looking at Johnson’swords and Ebony’swork over the years, it appears that not a lot has changed. Case in point: In Ebony’s 1979 issue about black-onblack crime, Johnson wrote, “Tens of thousands of young Black men andwomen, the flower of our youth, are riding conveyor belts leading frompetty crime to reform schools to prisons to major crimes to death and/or the penitentiary.” Concerns over the school-to-prison pipeline and police in schools haven’t abated.
Younger generations haven’t embraced Ebony like their forebears, Whitaker said. Johnson Publishing sold Ebony and Jet in 2016 to a Texas-based private equity firm, and its iconic buildingwas sold and turned into high-end apartments. Johnson Publishing filed for bankruptcy in 2019 and sold its vast photo archives for $30 million to a group of philanthropic foundations. As of July, Ebony hadn’t published a print edition in more than a year, andCEOWillard Jacksonwas forced out.
Whitaker said that without Ebony, there’s not amainstay documenting monumental events such as the social unrest that followed the police killings of George Floyd and BreonnaTaylor.
“We don’t have a vehicle that is chronicling this for us and helping us put it in perspective,” said the South Shore native. “Ebony gave Black intellectuals and scholars, but also people who are just the voice of the time, a platform and a forum to kind of put this all in context for us.”
As for an heir apparent to the Ebony brand, Whitaker said that while there are many entities out there trying to fill the void, nothing has the universal resonance that Ebony had.
“Partly that’s because there are no barriers to publishing now because in digital, anybody is a publisher and anybody can put something together and put it out there,” he said. “No one’s captured the heart and soul of the community in the sameway that I think Ebony did in its heyday. We miss that.”