Johnson Publishing Company

More Than a Magazine

Founded in the 1940s by entrepreneur John H. Johnson, the Johnson Publishing Company was one of the largest Black owned media enterprises in American history. Producing the iconic magazines “Ebony” and “Jet”, along with a host of other periodicals, radio programs, a television variety show, a fashion line, and cosmetic brand (Ebony Fashion Fair), The Johnson Publishing Company was a primary hub of Black culture and society and with its publications represented a beautifully myriad and complex community despite the scourge of institutional racism. The company’s crowning glory was its magazines, “Ebony” and “Jet”, whose pages were populated with articles and stories featuring notable African Americans including Dorothy Dandridge, Malcolm X, Diana Ross, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, Iman, and many more. The publications became staples in African American households as their images and narratives affirmed the tangibility of Black achievement and social mobility and progress.

The magazines’ depiction of everyday Black life was another critical part of its significance. It captured the beautiful heterogeneity of Blackness across the nation and the globe. The publications produced by The Johnson Publishing Company centered the humanity of Blackness and manner few publications, such as “Life” and “Time”, were capable of doing. “Ebony” and “Jet” provided images of Black people falling in love, raising families, attending colleges and universities, and engaged in social causes.