Publisher John Johnson, dead at 87

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Founder of Ebony and Jet "... broke new ground by bringing positive portrayals of blacks into a mass-market publication and encouraging corporations to use black models in advertising aimed at black consumers."

It seems so obvious now, but to think that some people, including Roy Wilkins, thought that targeting a magazine toward blacks was a ridiculous idea is just completely ludicrous.

Johnson was one of two major magazine publishers to come out of Arkansas. The other one? Helen Gurley Brown.

― Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Monday, 8 August 2005 21:32 (twenty years ago)

And I just realized that Paul McCartney has recorded songs with both "Ebony" and "Jet" in their titles.

― Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Monday, 8 August 2005 21:41 (twenty years ago)

http://www.johnsonpublishing.com/graphics/content/building05.jpg

First building constructed in Chicago's loop by an African-American man since Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable built his log cabin along the Chicago River in 1722.

― Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Monday, 8 August 2005 21:45 (twenty years ago)

These magazines (and black weeklies) are a hugely unsung cultural area. Biographies of Sam Cooke, Dinah Washington and the like scratch the surface. Public figures would often go to them to get their stories out, and important information that the white press wasn't covering (Cooke's refusal to play for a segregated house in Virginia) was also there.

― Rickey Wright (Rrrickey), Monday, 8 August 2005 22:03 (twenty years ago)

Think about what America would've been like had there not been a place where stories like Emmett Till's could be published.

― Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Monday, 8 August 2005 22:09 (twenty years ago)

That's right down the road from me. RIP.

― Land Ho (dymaxia), Tuesday, 9 August 2005 11:04 (twenty years ago)

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