Ebony: Biggest Negro Magazine
Goodman, Walter
THE QUESTION, Who speaks for the Negro? invites no satisfactory answer in these rhetoric-drenched times. Or, rather, it invites so many answers that none of them can be satisfactory. No large...
...A New York photographer whose sympathies He with SNCC is particularly scornful, 'of "all those flukey jobs they write about, like the cat at IBM who's making seventy-five hundred dollars a year...
...Ebony, to be sure, has no copyright on the upbeat article...
...There appeared a fresh emphasis' on Negro identity—mainly in articles 'about the history of the black man in America written by Lerone Bennett, Jr,,, a young staff member...
...In authentic popular magazine style, the cover lines promised more than the scrupulously superficial articles revealed—but this venture into, what Langston Hughes would later call a "period of occasional cheapness and _puerility" did not last long...
...Ebony's success reminds us that there are millions of Negroes who, in the fabled national tradition, have had a taste of the fruits and want more...
...of Race Pride...
...In reply to criticism that he is missing some essence of black America, Johnson says, "We try to deal with things as we find them, not as we'd like to find them...
...It is the voice of solid, successful professionals, and its insistent theme is the hope and desirability of success in its more banal manifestations...
...The bulk of the maga }ne was sill .given, over, to ,Entertainment, Sports, and...
...Now it took to publishing pieces on the order of "Is It True What They Say About Models...
...The difference is only that Negroes have been denied a fair shot at them...
...S S O LARGE is Ebony's present readership— somewhere between a quarter and a third of the entire adult Negro population, if the advertising department is to be believed-that executive editor Herbert Nipson is without doubt accurate when he says that his magazine is read by both government officials and housemaids...
...An article on "Lefties— a Maligned Minority" reveals that Bayard Rustin is left-handed...
...It has hard words-for neither 'swinger nor , square, moderate nor militant, Whitney Young, Stokely, Carmichael, or Lew Alcindor...
...Ebony's own attitude toward contemporary militancy was nicely displayed last December by an article on "Natural Hair—New Symbol...
...Negroes" might...
...After laying claim to a readership of 2.5 million families, all "spenders" with an average income of $7,000, Ebony proceeds: `Because they rarely have a chance to buy handsome homes, they tend to furnish the homes they have handsomely...
...to people at all levels of readiness and unreadiness...
...was struck in its pages...
...Moreover, although Ebony is very much a magazine of the inner city, it has never spoken to a cross-section of the Negro masses...
...In this sense, working on Ebony is no different from work WALTER GOODMAN ii g on TV Guide...
...In the mid-forties, 'a'll America was 'itching to shake off wartime rigors and set- forth upon an orgy of cbnsumership...
...you don't have to be Negro to detest the mass audience...
...The mere fact of its existence and success has been an inspiration to the Negro masses...
...More than a third of its readers, as its ad salesmen emphasize, are high-school graduates and nearly a quarter have had some college education— compared to about 10 per cent for the Negro population as a whole...
...There wete, -during this -time, ,articles on rising black militancy in Mississippi, on the ordeal of the first Negro studer.t tp., enter .theUniversity 91 Alabama, and on the comjng, to leadership, of-.h'Iartin Luther King and others...
...In the early 1950's, it succumbed to the most ancient of these calls and instituted a department named, with exemplary =candor, "Sex...
...It now costs 50 cents a copy, averages 150 pages an issue, and grosses around $12 million a year...
...Western Electric engineers...
...The- magazine supported-President JYol bii editorially.' in 1964 rand _later' -describe' hit as "welf'cm his way to becoming a permaneiYt figure in civil fights history...
...But there is a related question—Who speaks to the Negro?—that, thanks to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, one can begin to answer...
...Its manner is as follows: A recent report on the fact that 94 per cent of Negro pupils in the South, are still in segregated schools is set between features on a blind TV newsman in Cleveland and ,a judo black-belt queen in Fresno, California...
...Although Ebony's readers, like the magazine itself, are doubtless- more militant than they were five years ago, it isn't • likely that full-fledged militants makeup any -great percentage of them...
...What the hell are they telling me, man...
...Some of 'the criticism of Ebony is really a criticism of any mass magazine...
...The Girl Who Wouldn't .Give Up" tells of a paralysis victim who "has .taught herself to live a useful life though confined to wheelchair...
...you'd never know from reading other publications that Negroes got married, had beauty contests, gave parties, ran successful businesses, or carried on any normal living activities...
...Powell, and lesser heroes receive an undeviatingly kind press...
...Many of - its- ' articles t of recent .years fit incongruously with the young , John Johnson's bright and , simple premises...
...Like -all, mass publications, Ebony is a popularizer of ideas rather than an innovator...
...and it will surely disappoint whites who look to a mythologized black, speaking Swahili, to shake white America loose of its various hang-ups...
...Or is it a sign .©f indifference that the 'holders of only 19 per cent of Ebony's million copies took the trouble to: send in a preference '(Whereas Lerone Bennett,: Jr., the nearest-- thing to a militant in Ebony's Upper' echelons...
...Nor did John Johnson refrain .from i}sing his editorial pages, to !post his own...
...There's Elgin Baylor, captain of the Los Angeles Lakers, sinking a shot in behalf of...
...and it was .reported within its Sunday-supplement-like triages that Eddie (Rochester) Anderson madejliore than $150,000 "a .year and had a hose ,"like . the - Taj .Mahais of other-movie - itars-7-I'An . article on Richard Wright !noted 'that his royalties °"ntade a pretty fat bankroll," Thefl picture of the good "life that Ebb iy held up in its edrly'.years was -'appropriate to the season...
...In spite of all the things that we might like to be, we still act like Americans" It is understandable that people who, have no hope of enjoying the flaunted fruits of this society may be driven to bum down the trees...
...The .cover showed a Negro boy nestled among a half dozen white boys at fie° Henry Street Settlement...
...be forgiven , for 'suffering , from an especially.severe itch...
...And because they have a healthy vanity, they spend more on personal grooming products than do white families of the same income...
...Had not'niany , Negrasoldiers, as Fighters for PReedom.'after all, experienced integration' of .sorts, in the service itself' and in, foreign lands...
...It seems to Bayard Rustin, for one, . that "at a time when many Negroes are deeply distressed and have lost faith in the system, Ebony makes a contribution by showing over and over that great numbers of, Negroes have been accepted in many areas...
...While the ads in Ebony still run, heavily ,toward whiskey and beer and hair and skin ,preparations, the magazine boasts an estimable company of , national advertisers who paid',$7 million for space in 1967...
...For years Ebony has p spered on ads for products Mm Silky State EBONY: BIGGEST NEGRO MAGAZINE hair straightener, Royal Crown hair relaxer, Nadinola bleaching cream, Dr...
...There are different routes to heaven...
...Fred Palmer's skin whitener, and Posner Kintona—"Darling, I've never seen your skin look so light, so bright—so lovely...
...such as that Negroes were being accepted into.White House society...
...As the first issue ..of .hiss, magazine was about to appear in the "f J of 1945, John"H...
...The magazine's message to white America is simply, "Open up and let us in...
...Every Negro, whether he's an ambassador from Ghana or a wino on 18th and Wabash, has something in common," 'remarks Nipson drily...
...Today Johnson admits to a certain embarrassment over the devotions his magazine -once -made to Cadillacs and minks, and such artifacts of high living no longer receive much play...
...The circulation of Ebony magazine stands now at about a million copies a month...
...insurance company...
...But, to the distress of militants, Ebony, even in its present, tougher mood, never singles out anyone as an 'Uncle-Tom...
...Ih 1ts `coverage of'civil rights for tile rest of the decade, Ebony " exhibited the wishful' passivity that EBONY: BIGGEST NEGRO MAGAZINE se tled' over the country.- "Many schools -in Southern states have voluntarily ended school segregation," it reported in' January 1955, and : for many , months thereafter its pages were a trove of heartening itetns...
...Not surprisingly, young Negro militants, who today dominate the racial scene in display if not in numbers, find a good deal to mock in a magazine edited for people who are hung-up on French Provincial...
...by the nature of their ads they reinforce, the image to which John Johnson has dedicated himself...
...it abetted the cause of virtue 'by prompting Johnson'- to' rethink his publishing 'strategy...
...Such efforts ; must have had some ,effect by now , (at the very least, Ebony has expanded the job market for Negro models), but exactly what.effect is' not readily measured...
...How deeply can one be influenced," asks a recent ad for Ebony, "by any medium that shows Negroes mainly when they are disturbing the peace...
...minimizing the negative aspects of race relations...
...The lunchroom^counter, sit-downs which began in'}Greensboro...
...tenth .were 'content-- to be called "-Negro...
...Otherwise it rejoices in the common values...
...r 'anniversary issue, which had Ralph Bunche on the cover, carried a niessage - from ""John 'Johnson, `in which he `took credit unto Ebony for promoting interracial understanding by "emphasizing , the positive a#ld...
...its -frequent articles on Africa can it...
...An alliance of the good ,gays-:agaipst, the bad,,was something-Ebony bad no,- trouble interpreting , to . its audience, and -;its civil rights coverage increased and ,improved in those - years whose lost spirit decent men of -,both races now mourn...
...It is a prodigy of American publishing, by far the largest Negro publication in our history, and for observers of the racial scene to pass it by their fascination with Mohammed Speaks is like scorning the Ladies Home Journal in order to explain America by reference to the East Village Other...
...Ebony's - success stories lean heavily toward athletes and entertainers, and these features : seem to come straight from the fan clubs, untouched by human editors...
...the sort—but Ebony's, coyerage was less -full and .less -peeceptive than articles appearing, elsewhere...
...The dissatisfaction of the black militants with Ebony is rooted in much the same fact of commercial life that has often confounded white radicals trying to fathom the American businessman: he is beyond ideology...
...Ebony found it easy to adapt to the era 'of integrationist good feelings of the early 1960's, when white and black freedom riders and apostles of nonviolence sang and bled together in the South...
...Today publisher Johnson's properties include Jet, a minuscule news magazine...
...The average reader is 31...
...Advertisers fell under the' spell of the hypn®tic tube and lusted after 'its 'spellbound audiehee - of tens" of millions, and a number of famous journals expired...
...The point requires no gloss, yet Ebony's voice is neither that of ambassador nor wino, neither of housemaid nor government official...
...Johnson, who is on the,, beard -of the , National -Urban League, has , a - lot of ,-faith , in enlightened members of the White Power Structure like Henry Ford...
...But magazines that concentrated on appealing to the special in'terests of a 'special -part of the population 'e'ather than attempting' to compete- with the TV vaudeville" for the' entire population managed to survive and, in 'time, to 'prosper...
...Ken neth Clark praised this service after the maga zine had been in business for about 10 years: "•It is almost impossible to measure the morale-lifting value of such a magazine...
...T T HE TROUBLE with Ebony, in the view of one militant who calls it "the Thurgood Marshall of magazines," isthat it "is just not with it...
...Publisher John= son believes that we shouldn't have gotten involved in`-- Vietnam in the first 'place...
...In a certain widely preached belief, not untouched by condescension, life in the black ghetto retains a kind of spontaneity and naturalness, of realness that the suburban householder has exchanged for comfort, conformity, and a pervasive ennui...
...beyond the age of student militancy and street gangs, old enough to be settled in family life...
...Optimistic messages, to be sure, and dated and not altogether inspiring...
...As the Nation turned its attention to the - softer pleasures of peace, Ebony's rhapsodies on'Negro performers ("A bay in'Ht'llywdod with Lena Home"), the upbeat pieces ' on peripheral "racial matters ("Cant& "and Kaye Break` Radio rules "to '9 tafegtties"'), and a ihonthl pofjiourri ±(`e ro 'and white hat p'artne s ptove -interracial" business' pays' dividehd §") directed its leader `to<ld k in the same bright direction...
...No large city is without its complement of lusty-lunged fellows who present themselves as spokesmen not only for all of America's Negroes but for the colored populations of the entire globe, and not only for Negroes now living but for large numbers of the long dead...
...The first copy of Ebony, modeled frankly if falteringly on Life, appeared in November 1945, the creation of a 28-year-old, Arkansasborn, Chicago-bred man named John H. Johnson who had made his publishing debut three years before with the pocket-sized Negro Digest, modeled frankly on the Reader's Digest...
...which, began to look' somewhat less like a dime fan magazine during these years, was prominent among them...
...But with items like `Break -through on the Airlines—Negro air men join 15,740-man cockpit crew," it performs- a special service for its special audience...
...Also, its stories of progress have given insecure and long-inhibited Negroes something to identify with in a difficult period of rapid change...
...Sex in Prison," ",The- Love Life of Joe Louis," and "How Moral Are Our Coeds...
...And it concludes by warning advertisers that "when a Negro looks at your ad and has to translate white WALTER GOODMAN faces into black faces you lose something in the translation...
...and many of them go out of their way to deliver John Johnson's message...
...it doesn't tell black folks where It's really at...
...be-said to have contributed to the...
...The • magazine gets 'very few critical letters, and the 'prevailing 'tone is far from militant...
...We are speaking to the whole black population," explains the house historian Lerone Bennett, Jr...
...It is understandable that people who have found the fruits tasteless or indigestable may propose redoing the orchards...
...There in the, Greyhound bus—and, not in the rear—is a cute Negro child being chummy with a cute white child...
...The songs piped by Ebony, however, are the good old tunes of achievement, recognition, and success— the rewarding job, the pleasant surroundings, the college-destined kids...
...That they voice the angers of the ghetto is certain...
...One may ..take such a passage as a kind of self-iron or, as a bitter comment on businessmen, white and black, who purposefully collaborate to wring a dollar out of the misfortunes of America's Negroes—but that ..surely - would be ,a, ,misreading of the publisher's intention...
...sleek and shining cars...
...Only .with...
...Ebony...
...It was an astute decision...
...homemaker, with her box of Tide, a Negro girl in her Lovable bra, a Negro baby with his -portion of Gerber's, a Negro couple savoring Mogen David concord wine...
...When some very heavy winds began to blow through ..the . Negro - communities in the mid-sixties, Ebony's pages showed their impact...
...But the staples of most issues continue to be individual Negroes who have, in one way or another, made it...
...comment, so tactfully phrased, one can, hear the old lament and rationalization of the bright popular magazine editor, obliged to make his livelihood in association with material that in his heart of hearts he disdains...
...Along with this story could be found strategically placed announcements for new Johnson products—Duke Natural Easy Comb and Duke Natural Hair Sheen, as well as Raveen Au Naturetle, "the perfect answer for the woman who wears her hair in the natural style...
...in Bennett's...
...Not merely was 1954 a year of recession, it was also the year of the Supreme Court 'decision on school integration...
...Johnson today employs about 300 people, including what it amuses him to call "a token" 15 or so whites...
...There are businesslike life-insurance salesmen and clean-cut...
...In April a Standard Oil clerical manager, a Ford Foundation program officer, a tire, production supervisor, a technician supervisor, .a hospital officeservices chief, and a research director joined the scores of upwardly mobile Negroes who have been presented over the years in the magazine's "Speaking of People" columns...
...at, all in the Ebony style...
...Most of Ebony's copies are now sold by subscription, and the median income of the households that receive them is $6,648, which is less than that of white households but $2,000 more than the median income of Negro households...
...But others may find some encouragement here...
...But the editors evidently scour the land for less familiar stories, and the results, presented in unfastidious prose, tend to give Ebony the appearance of a black-face take-off on what popular . magazines were like 20 years ago...
...Aiming from the first, to' be a mass magazine, Ebony was subject to all the siren calls that trouble that species...
...Success for Ebony came fast...
...consciousness, zof, black,,'solidarjty, then :barely stirring .tong the yo}ng—.and these articles, loi .. om xotic, -deter anti, short ° oon ,.critical ai atysist, were in the, same anotle of, synth tic journalism that typified Ebony throughout its first decade...
...And where else can one find a feature on "Negro Pioneers in Mortgage Banking...
...These articles , ask to be judged not as exercises in scholarship, but as frank efforts to ,build a sense of pride in Negro accomplishment from colonial times onward...
...But Ebony speaks a language that both Negroes and whites can understand and act upon, and that is no little thing in a troubled territory whose lingua franca seems to be deteriorating into yawps of hatred and yowls of apocalypse...
...There is a Negro homeowner with his Buick Electra and a Negro...
...Some of its positive emphases been wriiten...
...according to a Starch Report, each issue reaches some 4,575,000 readers...
...but now that wefire there we ate obligated to "slipport the governs Tent in all its' efforts:" There seem to ,be differe ices -of opinion arbtmd the office: -a SN(C'wiitdt vvl o submitted an article to -Ebony °which was 'based on a trip to -, North Vietnam blames' John ' Johnson for rejecting- it over the 'recommendations of , staff members that -it be accepted...
...The message to black America is that getting in is possible and worth the effort...
...Articles on militant students and street gangs now were sympathetic to a fault;, the "aimless, rampage of WALTER GOODMAN white collegians" at Fort Lauderdale was contrasted to the "grim protest" of Black Panthers who brought their rifles into the California state capitol in a demonstration against proposed bills to restrict the carrying of guns...
...In recent months, Ebony has been rubbing in the fact of its success to the part of White America that places advertising, with a series of ads of its own that make rather startling reading on the back page of The New York Times...
...The point is well . taken...
...John Johnson's cosmetics sideline is centered around Ultra Sheen permanent creme relaxer and Raveen hair conditioner and Duke greaseless hair pomade...
...But if Ebony's pages indicate anything about its readers it is that they are not about to redeem American society, or to show the rest of us how to purify ourselves or our air or how to bring peace to the world, Ebony has only one fundamental criticism to make of this society—that it is streaked with racism...
...T T HE 1954 RECESSION, during which Ebony's newsstand sales dropped abruptly from 500,000' to 400,000, marked a decisive turning point for the' magazine...
...Carnation Milk, and that's Willy Mays in the Petrocelli suit...
...SNCC field secretary Julius Lester, who considers the magazine's hair and skin ads "disgusting" and who rejects its "black bourgeois standards," nevertheless considers Ebony "must reading...
...Is, it a sign of militancy that half of the readers who responded to a poll conducted by the magazine at the end of last year expressed a preference to be called "Afro-American" and a quarter expressed a preference for "black," while fewer than- -a...
...Circulation' rose to 'more than 300,000 ' before ' the magazine's fourth birthday...
...Put out along with its lesser cousins from his own building, a spacious former funeral home on Chicago's South Michigan Avenue that reputedly used to service Al Capone and his friends, Ebony is the heart of this little empire...
...And the thing you lose might be his business...
...Irony and bitterness are not...
...The - decade of the fifties, which= saw the first furious"growth of television, was a difficult time' for many magazines...
...F.B.I...
...Tan, a teenage confession magazine ("How to Flirt Without Sexual Come-on") ; and the Negro Digest, revivified in 1961 after a decade in suspension to print original stories, poems, and essays at a loss to the publisher...
...North . Carolina, in , , 1~ebru y=1960, came as, ::no,-less of a sur prise to the.-editors of Eboriy than to -the_ rest of the nation,, and beginning at about this time a major new note...
...Yet in December he ran the paean to natural hair, featuring such eminent symbols of the mode as Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, and the lately converted Sammy Davis...
...The Ebony formula transmits month after month the sense of-an orderly and thriving middle-class Negro life in America, a very-different sense from the one transmitted by tfie unsettling columns of our daily newspapers...
...Johnson, declining to become v "all , hot and bothered about the race question," promised , that.Ebony would "mirror the happier side of Negro life...
...Advertisers have done more than merely hasten to, profit from this revelation...
...It fails to make a commitment...
...Not that militants suffer any discourtesy in Ebony's pages...
...With an issue in August 1965 devoted to The White Problem, which contained contributions - from Martin Luther King, Carl Rowan, Kenneth Clark, Louis Lomax, and James Baldwin playing a reprise of his -white-tnan's,burden number, Ebony began a series of annual special issues given over to .reports " and, K essays- ott . some _ momentous theme, In August of 1967 'the subject was Negro Youth in America--the toughest issue in-the magazine's history...
...These, Johnson maintains, and not any vision of an African renaissance, are the goals that motivate Negroes as well as whites in this country...
...To judge by the Ietters-`to the editor, "Ebony's readership contains its' share of both hawks.-and{doves, people 'whd protest and -people who dislike protester-s...
...and Negro newlyweds fenced in by a set of bedroom furniture in French Provincial, white with gold trim...
...it responds to the prevailing winds...
...It has covered in its manner the great stories of its time, from the lynching of Emmet Till to last summer's riots...
...Personalities, .including such peealiar items as "Problen ,of.Blond,Negroes," aa}d "Tallest Negro in-, the World...
...uses "black" - exclusively, Johnson himself alternates between "black" and "Negro," depending on whom he's talking to...
...Ebony employs whatever militant jargon is in the air (an article entitled "I'm a Soul Brother" turned out to be about Senator Edward Brooke), but its goals remain the liberal goals of the fifties, --integrated,education, open housing,: good jobs and- the universal ballot: Far froth' despairing of the political process, as many militazits proclaim they do, Ebony cheered last year's Negro ,'mayoralty victories in Cleveland -and Gary,- and 'it expressed doubts about the -effectiveness of -further street demonstrations...
...It had, -after all, been preaching Negro-white cooperation for nearly two decades, and r'lt could wholeheartedly cheer on the students who braved . the truncheons of Southern 'sheriffs...
...An article on whether parents should push their gifted daughter into a musical career or allow her to have an ordinary -happy childhood makes an agreeable kind of problem for lower-middle-class housewives to mull over of an evening, and the accompanying pictures constitute vicarious treats in themselves -- handsome families in nicely furn EBONY: BIGGEST NEGRO MAGAZINE ished homes, entertaining graciously, vaca tionins luxuriously, enjoying their middleclass , problems and amenities...
...Now, instead of relying on hard-sell toles ('"Do Negro Stars Prefer White Husbands...
...Because they are not sure of their reception in public entertainment places, they entertain bountifully at home...
...It is risky to draw large conclusions about the character or values of the readers of a magazine from the magazine's pages...
...This may disappoint militants like the critic of Ebony who told me, "We can't be white so why should we try...
...Look at the handsgme young , brownskin couple extolling the delights of Coca Cola in full page color," wrote Langston Hughes in a tribute on Ebony's 20th birthday, "or the good-looking young Negro in the `Camel Time' ad, the stunning, brown girl smoking a Newport, and those wholesome,Negro,families now pictured getting into...
...whether they have a more palpable constituency is not certain at all...
...Nor is this schizophrenia...
...We feel about all parts of the movement like we feel about religion," says John Johnson...
...A lady from Cleveland reports: "I Was a Spy for the...
...Specializing in the Negro market, Supreme grossed $10 million last year...
...Before I started Ebony," Johnson observed some years ago...
...In rebuttal to the charge that they are encouraging a petty-bourgeois mentality' .Ebony's editors point to their articles on edifying , chapters in the history of the black man 'in America, to the articles , on Africa, to the unparochial coverage of all facets of the movement, to the editorial calls on, middle-class Negroes to take on more responsibility . for their poorer brothers...
...Everybody knows it he was white he'd be making twelve thousand?' Yet despite a steady preference for reporting on the thousands of ascending Negroes rather than the millions of the ghettobound, Ebony cannot fairly be charged with ignoring the Negro's unending struggle for votes, jobs, and education...
...Johnson also owns a cosmetics company and is the biggest single stock-holder in the Supreme Life Insurance Company, for which he once worked in a low-level job...
...he turned to the home subscriber-,- working through church groups and the like...
...Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, Cassius Clay, Adam Clayton...
...in another age altogether, like c. 1956 article, "Democracy Comes to tWasbington:Capital -makes rapid strides in ending ,Jim Crow"-and some seen to have been written in anotier age altogether` like the 1959 story oy ' club cutting down vandalismTptlliea irospect Park sec' tion- of Brooklyn...
Vol. 15 • September 1968 • No. 5
