John H. Johnson, head of Johnson Publishing Co., sits in his Chicago office. He helped change the image of black people portrayed by U.S. media. By Rachel Siegel Rachel Siegel National business reporter Email Bio Follow April 10 at 9:34 AM Johnson Publishing Co., which launched Ebony and Jet magazines and was once one of the nation’s largest and most successful black-owned businesses, has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
The brand pointed to a number of “factors outside of the company’s control” that led to Tuesday’s filing. The buyer of the company’s media division hadn’t made its required payments. One of the company’s largest retailers fell into bankruptcy. Johnson Publishing’s cosmetics business, Fashion Fair, struggled to keep up with online competitors. And the company had to pay for a recall that stemmed from “quality issues” from one of its manufacturers.
Ebony debuted in November 1945, pledging to “mirror the happier side of Negro life — the positive, everyday achievements from Harlem to Hollywood. But when we talk about race as the No. 1 problem of America, we’ll talk turkey,” the Chicago Sun Times reported. Jet came along six years later. In 1955, after the death of Emmett Till — a 14-year-old boy from Chicago who was abducted, tortured and killed for reportedly offending a white woman in Mississippi — his mother, Mamie Elizabeth Till-Mobley, called Ebony and Jet and urged them to show the world what had been done to her son. Jet published an open-coffin photograph of Till’s body. Historians point to Jet’s publication of that photograph as a focal point in the civil rights movement.
Johnson, who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996, died in 2005 at age 87. His obituary in the Chicago Sun-Times described him as “the man who turned Ebony into gold.” President Clinton was among the 2,000 mourners at his funeral.
Sadness .
So many memories covering part of Americas famous Americans
Not good. Not good. Not good. We've lost too many independant voices in our country.
The Washtington Post is right behind these folks. If you want to survive as media, be factual and keep bias out of reporting.
Very sad
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