Johnson Publishing Company history

By mid-1943, the monthly circulation of Negro Digest had reached 50,000 copies.

Another magazine intended for African American readers, Jet, was introduced in 1951.

In 1957 Ebony Fashion Fair blazed a trail of fashion excellence that has endured the test of time.

The company launched its annual Ebony Fashion Fair in 1958, a traveling fashion show that had raised $48 million for scholarships and charities by the early twenty-first century.

In 1963, he and John F. Kennedy posed together to publicize a special issue of Ebony, which was celebrating The Emancipation Proclamation.

In 1973 the company began publishing Ebony Jr! (now defunct), a magazine designed to provide "positive black images" for pre-teens.

Negro Digest eventually became BLACK WORLD. It continued publication until 1975 when it was discontinued due to low circulation.

In 1981 Johnson's adopted son, John E., a staff photographer for the company, died of sickle-cell anemia at age 25.

Fashion Fair would grow to become the world's number one cosmetics company for women of color, with annual sales in 1982 reaching more than $30 million, and the products being sold in more than 2,500 stores throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean.

"EBONY Interview with John H. Johnson." EBONY, November 1985.

Also in 1989, Johnson wrote his autobiography, Succeeding Against the Odds , with assistance from longtime Ebony editor Lerone Bennett, Jr.

In 1991 the company sold its controlling interest in the last minority-owned insurance company in Illinois, Supreme Life Insurance, Johnson's first employer, to Chicago-based Unitrin, a life, health, and property insurance company.

Gottschalk, Mary. "The Body is the Star of this Year's Ebony Fashion Fair."Seattle Times, 22 April 1992.

Also that year, the company entered into a joint venture with catalog company Spiegel Inc. to develop a fashion line and mail-order catalog aimed at African American women, launching a mail-order catalog called E Style to that effect in 1993.

Black, Bob. "Cosmetics Firms Court Blacks." Chicago Sun-Times, 13 April 1994.

In November 1995, the company expanded its operations with the launch of Ebony South Africa, a counterpart to the United States version of the magazine.

The catalog venture, E Style, was shuttered in 1997.

Berlau, John. "Ebony's John H. Johnson." Investor's Business Daily, 26 March 1998.

At the same time, Johnson Publishing faced a decrease in advertising revenues, which were hit even harder after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Higgins, Sean. "Publisher Soared Into History." Investor's Business Daily, 25 January 2002.

Johnson's daughter Linda Johnson Rice served as fashion coordinator of the Ebony Fashion Fair before becoming the company's CEO in 2003.

Mullman, Jeremy, "Redo's the Easiest Part for Ebony," Crain's Chicago Business, June 7, 2004.

Detar, James, "Publishing for the New Jet Set," Investor's Business Daily, June 6, 2005.

Jet became a digital-only publication in 2014.

In early 2015, Johnson Publishing put its entire photo archive, a collection that spanned seven decades of African-American history and included images of people like Martin Luther King Jr. and Sammy Davis Jr., up for sale with the hopes of getting $40 million for it.