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Born into
an impoverished family in Arkansas, Johnson went into
business with a $500 loan secured by his mother’s
furniture and built a publishing and cosmetics empire.
Johnson
built Ebony from a circulation of 25,000 on its first
press run in November 1945 to a monthly circulation
of 1.9 million in 1997. Jet magazine, a weekly, was
founded in 1951 and a third magazine, Ebony Man, a monthly
men’s magazine, was started in 1985.
Johnson launched
Ebony just after World War II, as black soldiers were
returning home. At the time there were no black players
in major league baseball and little black political
representation.
With blacks’
incomes far below white Americans, the idea of a black
publishing company was widely dismissed. Civil rights
leader Roy Wilkins advised Johnson to forget the publishing
business and save himself a lot of disappointment; Wilkins
later acknowledged he gave Johnson bad advice.
Ebony —
named by Johnson’s wife, Eunice — was created
to counter stereotypical portrayals of blacks in white-owned
newspapers, magazines and broadcast media. The monthly
magazine highlights the positive in black life.
“We
try to seek out good things, even when everything seems
bad,” Johnson once said in explaining the magazine’s
purpose. “We look for breakthroughs, we look for
people who have made it, who have succeeded against
the odds, who have proven somehow that long shots do
come in.”
In
their best interest, Johnson also encouraged major white
companies to advertise in black media. He sent an ad
salesman to Detroit every week for 10 years before an
auto manufacturer agreed to advertise in Ebony.
“We
couldn’t do it then by marching, and we couldn’t
do it by threatening,” Johnson said of gaining
advertisers. “We had to persuade people that it
was in their best interest to reach out to black consumers
in a positive way.”
According
to the company’s Web site, Johnson Publishing
Co. Inc. is the world’s largest black-owned and-operated
publishing company. It also includes Fashion Fair Cosmetics
and a book division.
Born Jan.
19, 1918, in Arkansas City, Ark., Johnson moved to Chicago
with his family at age 15. After graduating from public
schools, Johnson attended the University of Chicago
and Northwestern University.
While working
at the black-owned Supreme Life Insurance Co., where
he started as a clerk, Johnson founded Johnson Publishing
Co. in 1942. Its first magazine was Negro Digest, a
journal that condensed articles of interest to blacks
and published the poems and short stories of black writers.
Johnson used
Supreme Life’s mailing list to offer discount
charter subscriptions of the digest. To persuade a distributor
to take the magazine, he got co-workers to ask for it
at newsstands on Chicago’s South Side. Friends
bought most of the copies, convincing dealers the magazine
was in demand, while Johnson reimbursed the friends
and resold the copies they had bought.
The tactic
was used in New York, Philadelphia and Detroit, and
within a year, Negro Digest was selling 50,000 copies
a month. The magazine is no longer published.
Besides his
wife, Johnson is survived by a daughter, Linda Johnson
Rice, president of Johnson Publishing.
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