John Johnson: Why his death went unnoticed
By
Monica Moorehead
Published Sep 4, 2005 11:33 AM
When ABC newsreader Peter Jennings died Aug.
7 of lung cancer, the story dominated the air waves and electronic media for
many days. Entertainment Tonight gave great prominence to this event.
Just the opposite happened when John H. Johnson died one day later on
Aug. 8. Once his obituary appeared, he was all but forgotten by the big-business
media.
Just who was John H. Johnson? Johnson was the 87-year-old
African-American publisher of two of the most well-known Black-oriented
magazines ever, Jet and Ebony.
Johnson grew up poor under segregation in
Arkansas. His father was killed in a saw mill accident when he was 8 years old.
There was no Black high school there, so as a teenager he and his mother
migrated to Chicago where he lived until his death.
He founded Johnson
Publishing Company back in 1942 and to this day it remains the number-one
African-American publishing company worldwide. His first magazine, Negro Digest,
led to the 1945 founding of Ebony magazine, which still comes out monthly and
has over 1 million subscribers. Jet magazine began in 1951 and became the
number-one Black weekly publication. In 1973, Johnson Publishers also created
Fashion Fair Cosmetics, skin products that cater mainly to women of
color.
If you are Black in the U.S., Jet and Ebony were at one time or
another an important part of your social upbringing. Regardless of your economic
status and political outlook, these two magazines covered politics, sports,
entertainment, business, international developments, etc.—all from a Black
perspective. Jet and Ebony helped to fill a huge void in terms of what the
white-dominated media neglected to cover with the issues that directly impacted
Black America.
Even though Johnson was a capitalist and politically
conservative, his magazines covered the social issues of the day—from the
civil rights struggles to the Black Power movement to developments in Africa.
The fact that someone like Jennings, a well-known white journalist, would
get more attention than someone like Johnson, an African-American media pioneer,
exposes once again the double standard that flows from racism—U.S. style.
Certainly white media moguls, like Ted Turner and Rupert Murdoch, would never be
treated in such a dismissive way if they were to pass away tomorrow. In fact,
they would be treated like gods.
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