Ebony Magazine

This is EBONY Magazine's first edition, which came out November 1, 1945.

EBONY was focused on redefining the American narrative about daily American life being a Black person.

Ebony was founded to provide positive images for Blacks in a world of negative images and non-images. It was founded to project all dimensions of the Black personality in a world saturated with stereotypes.

— John H. Johnson
"Publisher’s Statement," November 1975
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John H. Johnson (1918-2005) launched Ebony magazine with the goal of producing a journal to chronicle African American lives. While Ebony’s first issue totaled 25,000 copies, by its sixtieth year in 2005, the publication reached ten million readers. The Johnson Publishing Company began in 1942, with the company’s first magazine, Negro Digest. Over the course of its history, the company evolved to produce books, films, television and radio programs, a record club, fashion shows, Fashion Fair cosmetics, and a roster of fifteen magazines, including Ebony, Jr!, Jet, and Negro Digest, which became Black World in 1970. Ebony however remained Johnson Publishing's leading publication from its inception in 1945, to its final print in May 2019.

Our mission is to tell black America, and the world, what black America is thinking, doing, saying, feeling, and demanding. Our mission is to tell it not only like it is but also like it was and like it must be.

John H. Johnson Publisher’s Statement, November 1975

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In November 1945, two months following the end of World War II, Ebony launched to document a particular worldview on the American dream and a new hope and vision for the nation. That year, animated by the confidence and optimism of veterans, African Americans began making more ardent demands for democracy as the armed forces returned home from war. Between 1945 and 1951, the year Jet magazine launched, calls for democracy began changing the nation’s laws.

It has been Ebony’s privilege to record, dramatize, and interpret this progress, from obscure court decisions to spectacular armed conflict; from the triumphs of a Jackie Robinson to the cathartic cries of a Marian Anderson or Gwendolyn Brooks.

— Editors, Ebony Magazine "Capsule History: 1945 - 1965," November 1965

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Few magazines dealt with blacks as human beings with human needs. Fewer magazines dealt with the whole spectrum of black life. It was, for example, rare for radio, newspapers or magazines to take note of the fact that blacks fell in love, got married and participated in organized community activities.

John H. Johnson" Publisher’s Statement," November 1975

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While the main emphasis has been on the presentation of the positive side of Negro achievement, Ebony has not hesitated to face the grim realities of such ugly episodes in American life as the Emmett Till lynching or the Birmingham brutalities and to present them in all their horror.

Langston Hughes "Ebony's Nativity: An Evaluation from Birth," November 1965

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Staff photographers such as Pulitzer Prize winner Moneta Sleet Jr., David Jackson, and Isaac Sutton, among others, played important roles in John H. Johnson’s vision of producing ennobled and representative imagery. They photographed prominent African American public figures such as Coretta Scott King, Nina Simone, Shirley Chisholm, and Leontyne Price.

We believed then – and we believe now – that image power is a prerequisite of economic and political power.

John H. Johnson
"Publisher's Statement," November 1975

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We felt in 1945 and we feel now that our story, the story of our hopes and hurts, the story of our dreams and agonies and triumphs, is one of the most eloquent and important stories in the world. We felt in 1945 – and we feel now – that story is central to the meaning and redemption of America.

John H. Johnson
"Publisher’s Statement," November 1975

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Then Ebony arrived in 1945 … to inform us and assure us that our lives were so important, they could never be edited out of the history of our people.

Maya Angelou

"Then Ebony Arrived,"
November 1995

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"Black joy has been shared with Ebony readers through pictures and so has black tragedy … Each camera expert has made a contribution to the ever-unfolding story the magazine continues to tell.
Editors, Ebony Magazine."

"Capsule History: 1945 - 1965,"
November 1975

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The Johnson Publishing Collection

The Johnson Publishing Company Archive was acquired in 2019 by a not-for-profit consortium that consists of the Smithsonian Institution, the J. Paul Getty Trust, the Ford Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

The collection includes 3.35 million negatives and slides, 983,000 photographic prints, 166,000 contact sheets, and 9,000 audio and visual recordings.

The consortium seeks to preserve, study, and digitize the Archive and to make it broadly accessible to the public.

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Source to EBONY Archives Online: https://www.ebony.com/ebony-magazine-anniversary/

Source: https://nmaahc.si.edu/75-years-ebony-magazine....