![]() ![]() “I grew up on Ebony,” said Emil Wilbekin, the former editor in chief of Vibe magazine. To sneak a peek at a young black power couple, dancers Carmen de Lavallade and Geoffrey Holder, prancing around in leotards in their living room to the delight of their toddler son. To learn a little about black history as seen through the eyes of Lerone Bennett Jr. (Of course, it was also where you got to see the Jet Beauty of the Week.) Ebony was where you went to see black achievement, to see black lives celebrated: to spend a day in the life of Lena Horne or Sammy Davis Jr. Jet was where you got the news about black lives - and that which affected black lives, such as the maneuverings in the White House. You can make yourself relevant again, but I don’t know if you can ever recapture that original voice and authority.”Įbony and Jet were two sides of the same coin. ![]() “But when the tactics needed to change, others stepped in to take up the fight. “It faces the same conundrum as the NAACP, where it is so connected to a particular way of fighting for equality,” Givhan said. “It’s very hard to carry that history and not start to look like a museum,” said Washington Post fashion editor Robin Givhan, who wrote about the travails of Ebony’s Fashion Fair cosmetics. In this post-civil rights, far from postracial era, Ebony no longer seemed relevant, more like something you’d pick up at your grandmother’s house for a hit of nostalgia. Ebony lit up Twitter with its striking Bill Cosby controversy cover last fall, but not many were talking about it beyond the cover. All too often, when you talk about Ebony, you talk about what once was, not what is. In many ways, it wasn’t a surprise: Both had been struggling for years in the midst of declining advertising sales and the slow, painful death of print. Sleet, Jr., the first African-American to win a Pulitzer Prize for photography. attending the funeral of her husband, Martin Luther King, Jr., in this Pulitzer-prize winning photograph taken by Moneta J. (Fashion Fair cosmetics, and the Ebony photo archive, which is up for sale, will remain in the hands of the Johnson family.)Ĭoretta Scott King and her daughter, Bernice are shown April 9, 1968, in Atlanta, Ga. Now, after 71 years in the hands of Johnson Publishing, Ebony and Jet have been sold to a black-owned private equity firm in Texas. We didn’t have any problems finding the other side.” I had something to say and was trying to show one side of it. once said, “I wasn’t there as an objective reporter. to the rise of the Black Panthers, Ebony and Jet were there, chronicling African-American lives, always pushing our side of the story - one of the original For Us, By Us enterprises.Īs Ebony’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Moneta Sleet Jr. ![]() Quickly.įrom the Montgomery bus boycott to the March on Washington to the funeral of Martin Luther King Jr. When Jet published those pictures of lynching victim Emmett Till in his coffin back in 1955, it all but dared you to not to act: Let’s get this movement started. to Sidney Poitier, from Billie Holiday to Lena Horne. It was the black family album, thick and glossy, where we got to see ourselves in all our glory, from Sammy Davis Jr. It gave you a sense of self-worth.Ebony was never just about journalism, not in that detached, just-the-facts way of the so-called mainstream media. Richardson, an African-American archivist, once put it, “ Ebony was a positive machine. Johnson, the founder of Ebony and Jet, made our accomplishments visible to the whole world.Īs Julieanna L. At a time when Black people almost never made it into the pages, let alone on the front covers of other “mainstream’’- or white-publications, John. ![]() Growing up, seeing those positive, rich images of Black culture in Ebony and Jet is something that has influenced me over the years, and has inspired me in more ways than I can count.Īs Boyce Watkins, a finance professor at Syracuse University once said in regards to Ebony and Jet, “ formed powerful prototypes for success in Black media’’ and “set the standard for Black business in America.’’ Quite simply, Ebony and Jet showed the world that Black is beautiful too.Įbony and Jet was one of the first few publications that gave Black people a voice it was one of the few platforms that gave us an opportunity when other publications wouldn't look our way (or would instead display us in a negative light). Like many of you, I grew up reading Ebony and Jet magazines LITERALLY cover to cover, and always felt a huge sense of pride seeing stories told of prominent business women and men that looked like me. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |