20th century AD

Ebony, Nov, 1990 by Langston Hughes

EBONY'S NATIVITY

Poet laureate of Black America recalled founding years of magazine

I CANNOT say I was a mere stripling of a boy when Ebony was born--but I was 20 years younger than I am now. I cannot say I was any less race-conscious in 1945 than I am today, but two decades ago I found less in the world to bolster my race pride than we have now. An especially happy event in regard to race was the birth of Ebony in the autumn of 1945--a new, young and handsome journalistic child of which to be proud.

I liked Ebony from its very beginning, and only a few times during its adolescent period did I get a bit put out with it--as often happens to parents with children who, in the puberty years, are inclined to try even a saint's soul. There was a time about 10 years ago when to me some of the articles and pictures in Ebony seemed on occasion in rather bad taste. I then complained to its editors that somebody on the staff seemed to be leading John H. Johnson's offspring (and mine by love and adoption) astray. That period of occasional cheapness and puerility passed. Now on the threshold of maturity, and heading toward its 21st year, Ebony has developed into a hale, hearty, wholesome, intelligent and beautiful publication indeed, of which I think every American might be proud.

Today Negro America finds in Ebony an increasingly well-rounded picture of itself in a handsome frame. The format is attractive, its layout eyecatching, and its paper good. This latter fact is of great importance, lest our picture history crumble into dust within a few years. Many of the magazines of 20 years ago are now sear, yellow, dry and falling apart. Not so with the early editions of Ebony which I have managed to keep in spite of my traveling hither and yon. And the bound volumes I have seen preserved in libraries are in good shape.

From the start Ebony has had consistently eye-catching and interesting covers, racial as well as interracial, beginning with Rev. Ritchie's seven boys of the Children's Crusade on the first issue, followed by lovely Hilda Simms of Anna Lucasta fame on the second cover. Over the years almost every famous Negro from Josephine Baker to Thurgood Marshall has looked out at us from an Ebony cover, with the most beautiful and talented of women getting an especially handsome print job on the inside and outside of the magazine. The pert face and piquant figure of the inimitable Miss Eartha Kitt has appeared so often in Ebony that some folks think she owns the magazine. But I never objected to Miss Kitt, it being hard ever to see too much of that particular charmer. From Lena Horne and the late Dorothy Dandridge to the sepia-toned international beauties Vera Lucia Coutos dos Santos of Brazil and Monique Cartright of Haiti, Ebony covers have presented pulchritude par excellence. High-fashion model Janie Burdette in the briefest of bikinis to Helen Williams in a winter coat; the Supremes all in red; sweet and simple Ruby Dee in a plain and simple blouse against the background of her husky husband, actor-playwright Ossie Davis; blonde Mai Britt and family, its head being Sammy Davis Jr., domesticated. And the lustiest beauty of them all, Miss Pearl Bailey.

But not by any means have all of Ebony's covers been devoted to pulchritude. Two covers that I remember well are the massed faces, Negro and White, of a portion of the crowd surging forward in the great March on Washington of 1963; and Pope Paul VI canonizing the Uganda Martyrs with the assistance of African Cardinal Laurian Rugambwa at a Pontifical Mass in St. Peter's. If we had had no Ebony, we would not have such photographs in dramatic color piled on thousands of newsstands throughout the country for our White fellow citizens to see at a glance the new roles Negroes play in today's world. One picture is sometimes worth a million words, and much easier to take in quickly. Passersby who might never buy a copy of Ebony see these vividly effective photographs as they purchase their newspapers. On the few times that Ebony has departed from photographic covers, striking drawings have served to attract attention--the sharp black and white of the recent "White Problem in America" issue, and the striking sketch of Frederick Douglas on the issue devoted to the 100th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, an occasion on which a whole magazine became a historical document that might well be printed between book covers.

The files of Ebony from its inception in 1945 to this 1965 issue could well serve as an overall history of the American Negro during the past 20 yeas--and on back beyond the Mayflower, since some articles have been devoted to past as well as contemporary happenings, such as Lerone Bennett's splendid pieces. While the main emphasis has been on the presentation of the positive side of Negro achievement, Ebony has not hesitated to face the grim realities of such ugly episodes in American life as the Emmet Till lynching or the Birmingham brutalities and to present them in all their horror. The careless charge some critics have made that Ebony presents only successful Negroes, colorful sports and entertainment personalities and pretty fashion models is not true. Even if it were true, there has been such a need in Negro lives to see themselves pictured beautifully, to view on the printed page something other than slums, and to learn that at least some Black men and women can be successful in this highly competitive world, that a magazine presenting nothing but the positive side would still be of value, even if the balance were a bit overboard. I do not feel that Ebony has gone overboard.