Founder and Publisher of Ebony and Jet Magazines Dies at 87
CHICAGO
Pioneering Black publisher John H. Johnson, whose Ebony magazine countered stereotypical coverage of Blacks, died August 8. He was 87.
LaTrina Blair, promotions manager with Chicago-based Johnson Publishing Co., said Johnson died of heart failure at Northwestern Memorial Hospital after a long illness.
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 that made him one of the wealthiest and most influential Black men in the United States.
He 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.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson said Johnson gave Blacks the first mirror to see themselves “as a people of dignity, a people with intelligence and beauty.
