Publishing Giant John H. Johnson Dies
By Esther Iverem, BET.com Contributing Critic

Posted August 8, 2005 — John H. Johnson, the savvy Chicago-based businessman who built both a Black media and cosmetics empire, died Monday at the age of 87.

A spokeswoman for Johnson’s self-named Johnson Publishing Company, publisher of Ebony and Jet magazines, told The Associated Press that a formal statement would be forthcoming.

“I think John proved that through courage, vision and leadership you can create an iconic African American brand, even against the toughest odds, and even in the face of race discrimination and economic segregation,” said BET founder and chairman Robert L. Johnson. “He was definitely an inspiration. If you think about it, BET is like Ebony. We use the electronic media to portray Black lifestyle and he used print — but our goals are the same: to provide content to an underserved audience and convince advertisers that these are consumers who need to be reached.

“He had to fight everyday to get his magazines on the stands and to get his hair care line on shelves,” added Johnson. “He was truly the template for any businessman trying to achieve in this society.”

Johnson was born Jan. 19, 1918 to a laborer and domestic worker in Arkansas City, Ark. and, at age 15, moved with his mother to Chicago. His father was killed in a sawmill accident when he was in grade school. In the North, he attended DuSable High School, where, according to NathanielTurner.com, his classmates were Nat King Cole and Redd Foxx.

After graduation, while working as a clerk for the Supreme Life Insurance Company, Johnson used a $500 loan — secured by his mother’s furniture — to launch his company and first publication, Negro Digest. Modeled after the popular Reader’s Digest, Johnson’s publication included condensed articles about the Black world, as well as short stories and poems by Black writers.

According to the book “The Press and America,” by Michael and Edwin Emery, Johnson would repeat the same strategy, of tailoring popular national magazine formats for a Black audience, with his launch of Ebony in November of 1945 and Jet in 1951.

Ebony, patterned on Life magazine, featured photographs that highlighted positive and even glamorous aspects of Black life and culture, including images of entertainers and athletes.

Historians have noted that the emphasis on pictures was embraced even more within an African-American community plagued by higher rates of illiteracy. During the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, this emphasis on pictures — often by the Pulitzer-Prize-winning Moneta Sleet, Jr. — provided a compelling record of a world-altering social movement and, in other sections of the magazine, drew criticism from a younger, more militant, generation less embracing of the magazine’s emphasis on Black affluence and middle-class comforts.

The magazine, which had a 70 percent home delivered circulation on 1.3 million copies in 1976, has, according to published reports, struggled in recent decades to appeal to younger readers.

While Jet magazine enjoys continued publication, Negro Digest, renamed Black World in 1970, is no longer published.

According to NathanielTurner.com, Johnson Publishing Company has a book division and employs more than 2,600 people with sales of more than $388 million. Johnson Publishing also owns Fashion Fair Cosmetics and produces the Ebony Fashion Fair, the world’s largest traveling fashion show, which visits more than 200 cities in the United States, Canada and the Caribbean.

In 1971 Johnson moved Johnson Publishing to an 11-story headquarters on Chicago’s fashionable Michigan Avenue. Today, the company’s building, along with that owned by the Chicago Urban League, are believed to be the only Black-owned properties in that city’s trendy Loop.

In 1982, Johnson became the first Black person on the Forbes’ list of the 400 wealthiest Americans. In 1987, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Association of Black Journalists and in 1996, President Bill Clinton awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor the nation can bestow on a citizen.

“He gave African Americans a voice and a face, in his words, ‘a new sense of somebody-ness,’ of who they were and what they could do, at a time when they were virtually invisible in mainstream American culture,” said President Clinton in presenting the award.

Along with his wife, Eunice, Johnson is survived by a daughter, Linda Johnson Rice, president of Johnson Publishing.