The Ebony revolution: magazine sparked major changes in perceptions and practice

Ebony, Nov, 2005 by Lerone Bennett, Jr.

That's what former Congressman Louis Stokes meant when he said on the floor of Congress: "When our Black soldiers came home battle-worn from World War II to a hostile America, EBONY was there. When Rosa Parks stood up to the racist Southern establishment and refused to move from her bus seat, EBONY was there. When the Supreme Court blasted the doctrine of 'separate but equal' and allowed Linda Brown to enter the school door, EBONY walked with her. EBONY followed the steps of our great leaders, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, both on the road to freedom and the road to the grave."

The same EBONY, the EBONY of the sit-inners and hip-hoppers and Freedom Riders, the EBONY of the NAACP and NUL and MBA and NBA, the EBONY of Beale Street and Wall Street and 125th Street and Auburn Avenue and Crenshaw Boulevard and Malcolm X Boulevard and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, the EBONY of Louis Armstrong, who helped invent New Orleans, and the EBONY of the New Orleans evacuees who speak to him and through him to the Great Black Shout that gave New Orleans and America a new song and a new meaning, the same EBONY, young and sassy as ever, calls us at this 60th turning of the road to the permanent revolution in sensibility and culture that it embodies.