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Tuesday August 30, 2005 3:15 PM
John Johnson dies
While
Princess Grace, Elizabeth Taylor and Julie Andrews adorned the covers of Look
and Life magazines in 1965, black actress Diana Sands and singer Nat King
Cole were gracing the covers of Ebony and Jet.
Cole was known and adored by millions of music fans, white and black, but
few whites had ever heard of Sands, who trained at Second City and starred
as Beneatha in the Broadway opening of “A Raisin in the Sun.”
Ebony gave such prominence to a budding actress because publisher John H.
Johnson, who died at 87 on Aug. 8, built a media empire on promoting blacks
-- actors, athletes and activists, along with little-known notables whom the
mainstream media ignored.
Johnson also wasn’t afraid -- particularly in the first three decades
of Ebony and Jet -- to publish controversial stories involving racial conflict,
such as interracial marriages, civil rights and graphic photos of the body
of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old Chicagoan who was slaughtered by white men
in Mississippi in 1955.
“The biggest, most extensive black archives are not in the Library of
Congress,” the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. said last week, “but at
the Johnson Publishing Company. He put a human face on black people.”
Since his death, Johnson has been memorialized as a man who promoted positive
images of blacks, particularly in the era before civil rights when black faces,
even famous ones, rarely appeared in the mainstream media -- except when they
committed a crime.
Explaining Johnson’s impact in a modern era where singer-actress Beyonce
Knowles is as likely to appear in People magazine as she is in Ebony is difficult.
Many whites and younger blacks don’t know about Johnson’s legacy,
or may never have read his magazines. But for decades, Johnson filled a huge
void in the lives of blacks who were shut out of magazines, newspapers and
television.
“He recognized this was an important niche, but I would also argue that
he saw himself as contributing to the uplift of African Americans and contributing
to a changing America,” said Lonnie Bunch, executive director of the
National Museum of African-American History and Culture, which is scheduled
to open in Washington in the next decade.
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