John H. Johnson was the man driving the publishing empire that included Ebony, Jet, Tan, and Ebony Jr. Black-owned abolitionist newspapers certainly predated all of Johnson’s publications, however, Ebony was the first mainstream news and culture magazine by and for Black Americans. Much like its predecessors, Johnson’s magazines pushed back against the negative images and stereotypes of Black Americans found in many other papers and magazines. Ebony was inspired by LIFE magazine and printed stories of the “happier side of Negro life.” Ebony, as with all of Johnson’s other titles, fostered a sense of community and was popular enough that Johnson was able to attract white advertisers. It chronicled the Civil Rights movement and for that reason alone makes it an important historical record of the times. Johnson was always looking for gaps in the market that his publications could fill and he launched several titles addressing those gaps. Ebony Jr. was for Black children. Tan focused on love and romance. Jet was a pocket-sized weekly news magazine. However, one market Johnson never addressed was the Black gay community. Taking a page out of Johnson’s book, designer Alan Bell launched BLK magazine, which started as a 16-page black & white monthly paper and grew to a full-color publication of up to 40 pages. BLK featured interviews with celebrities and up-to-date information about safe sex and HIV/AIDS. Both Johnson and Bell provided a place for African American voices to speak their truths and record their own histories.

TIMELINE

1870 – 15th Amendment gave Black Men the right to vote
1896  – Plessy v. Ferguson “separate but equal” ruling
1918  – John H. Johnston was Born Jan. 19 in Arkansas City, AR
1933  –  Johnson and his mother moved to Chicago, Illinois
1936  –  Johnson graduated with honors from DuSable 
1936  –  Johnson met Harry H. Pace, president of Supreme Life Insurance Company
1936  –  Johnson enrolled at the University of Chicago, and started job as in house assistant for Supreme Liberty Guardian
1942  – Johnson crowdfunded Negro World Digest at 24 years old
1945  – First issue of Ebony magazine published
1947  – Circulation for Ebony magazine grew to 300,000
1948  –  Ad Space in Ebony magazine was at 48 pages with major advertisers
1950  – Tan magazine founded
1953 -54  – Copper Romance magazine start & end
1953  –  HUE magazine began publication
1957-58  – Martin Luther King Jrs column ran in Ebony magazine
1959  – HUE magazine ceased publication
1963 – Woolworth Counter Protests
1964 – Civil Rights Act of 1964 Passed; guaranteed right to equal employment, limited literacy tests at polling places, enforced public desegregation
1970  – Negro World came back under the title Black World
1972  – JET magazine founded
1971  – Tan magazine re-named Black Stars
1973 – Ebony Jr! Founded
1976 – Black World ceased publication
1977-79 – Alan Bell worked for Gaysweek magazine in NYC
1985 – Ebony Jr! ceased publication
1988 – BLK magazine was founded by Alan Bell 
1994 – BLK magazine ceased publication
1996  –  Johnson received the Lifetime Achievement Award from American Advertising Foundation
2003 – Johnson inducted into the American Advertising Hall of Fame 
2003  – Howard University renamed the School of Communications to the John H. Johnson School of Communications 
2007  – Ebony Jr! went online for one year
2013  – Bell was inducted into the Gay Men Hall of fame of National AIDS Educations
2019  – BLK magazine archive digitized at Chicago’s DuSable Museum 

REFERENCES

Alan Bell. (2021, April 1). NAESM, Inc. Retrieved December 6, 2021, from https://naesminc.org/hall-of-fame/alan-bell/. 

Behance. (n.d.). Biography of Herbert temple. Behance. Retrieved December 5, 2021, from https://www.behance.net/gallery/109799419/Biography-of-Herbert-Temple?tracking\_source=search\_projects\_published\_date%7CPierre-Hugues+Herbert. 

Bernu, C. (2019). “BLK Issues: Preserving BLK Magazine in the DuSable Museum of African American History Archives”. American Quarterly, 71(2), 307–403. 

Borrelli, C. (2021, February 16). “Ebony's history in 6 covers”. Chicago Tribune, pp. 1–1. 

Bowean, L. (2011, Apr 27). HERBERT TEMPLE: 1919-2011: LONGTIME ART DIRECTOR GUIDED EBONY, JET MAGAZINES. Chicago Tribune Retrieved from https://libproxy.uco.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/herbert-temple-1919-2011/docview/863523424/se-2?accountid=14516

Campbell, A. (2019). Queer X Design: 50 years of signs, symbols, banners, logos, and graphic art of Lgbtq. Black Dog et Leventhal Publishers. 

Christian, M. A., Enterprise, B., & Tillery, A. (2016, August 4). John H. Johnson. EBONY. Retrieved September 10, 2021, from https://www.ebony.com/black-history/john-h-johnson/. 

Entrepreneur. (2015, August 17). John H. Johnson. Entrepreneur. Retrieved September 12, 2021, from https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/197650. 

Gallon, K. T. (2020). Pleasure in the news: African American readership and sexuality in the Black Press. University of Illinois Press. 

Henderson, L. (2008). Ebony Jr!: The rise, fall, and return of a black children's magazine. Scarecrow Press. 

Herbert Temple. Herbert Temple | The Chicago Design Archive. (n.d.). Retrieved December 5, 2021, from https://chicagodesignarchive.org/designer/herbert-temple. 

Horne, G. (2017). Rise and fall of the associated negro press Claude Barnett's Pan-African News and the Jim Crow paradox. University of Illinois Press. 

Jones, A. (2018, February 16). Lerone Bennett Jr., 89, former Ebony editor. The Philadelphia Tribune, p. 16. 

Knupfer, A. M. (2000). African-AMerican Designers: The Chicago Experience Then and Now . Design Issues, 16(3). Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/1511818. 

​​Lavette, L., Ciara, Diddy, Common, Simmons, K. L., Wade, D., Union, G., & Williams, V. (2021). Ebony: Covering black america. Rizzoli. 

Leekley, D. (1985, 08). Magazines for kids. Parents, 60, 138. Retrieved from https://libproxy.uco.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/magazines/magazines-kids/docview/1898983131/se-2?accountid=14516

Munro, S. (n.d.). BLK Magazine and Black Jack Newsletter. Arena. Retrieved December 6, 2021, from https://www.are.na/silas-munro/blk-magazine-and-black-jack-newsletter. 

ONE Archives Foundation. (2019, May 24). Writing while BLK: A conversation on the history of Blk. ONE Archives Foundation. Retrieved September 13, 2021, from https://www.onearchives.org/writing-while-blk/. 

Palmer, C. A., & Robinson, G. (2006). Ebony. In Encyclopedia of African American culture and history: The black experience in the Americas (2nd ed.). Thomson Gale. 

Robert Newman. Robert Newman RSS. (n.d.). Retrieved December 5, 2021, from http://www.robertnewman.com/black-history-magazines-ebony-jr/. 

Robert Newman. Robert Newman RSS. (n.d.). Retrieved December 5, 2021, from http://www.robertnewman.com/the-best-of-black-history-month-magazines/. 

Robinson, G. (2006). Ebony. In C. A. Palmer (Ed.), Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History (2nd ed., Vol. 2, p. 672). Macmillan Reference USA. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX3444700410/GVRL?u=edmo56673&sid=bookmark-GVRL&xid=b78f82d6

West, E. J. (2017). Lerone Bennett, jr.: A life in popular black history. The Black Scholar, 47(4), 3–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/00064246.2017.1368063

West, E. J. (2020). Ebony Magazine and Lerone Bennett Jr.: Popular black history in postwar America. University of Illinois Press.