Founder's statement

Ebony, Nov, 1995 by John H. Johnson

Fifty years ago, 600 months ago, 2,600 weeks ago, 18,262 days ago, History gave me the honor--and the responsibility--of publishing a magazine that immediately became the largest Black-owned magazine in the world.

Institutions, corporations, magazines, principalities have lived and died since Nov. 1, 1945, and Ebony is still here, and still No. 1.

This is an accounting of our stewardship, and our hope.

And I want to take this opportunity to thank the men and women, Black and White, the writers, photographers, advertisers, subscribers, all those, living and dead, who have supported the Ebony idea for all these years and who have made us No. 1 for 50 straight years.

This is a tribute, as we said once before, not to Ebony alone, not to our employees alone, not even to Blacks alone. This is a tribute to that which is deepest and truest in the common traditions that unite Americans, and it tells us that despite the temporary problems of the moment, the Dream is still working in us and through us and that the darkness is still light enough.

And it is important to remember that when I founded Ebony, Black and White America were almost totally segregated, and nobody, or almost nobody, believed a Colin Powell could run the armed forces or the United States government or that a Michael Jordan could compete against White basketball players. Basketball players and generals and mayors and vice chairmen of American Express and presidents of Maxwell House Coffee have changed since then, and analysts have suggested that we played a role in all this and that we paved the road for the breakthrough in American media. We appreciate this testimony, and we pledge in and through this golden anniversary to continue our 50-year commitment to excellence and diversity and equality.

Never before in fact has there been a greater need for a recognition of the Ebony idea.

Never before has there been a greater need for us to look both back and forward to see how far we have come and how far we still have to go before we reach the mountaintop of the Dream with Jackie Robinson and Martin Luther King Jr. and Mary McLeod Bethune and, yes, Earl Warren. To help us in this task, we have assembled an unprecedented array of contributors-President Clinton, former Presidents Ford, Bush and Carter, Maya Angelou, Coretta Scott King, Jesse Jackson, U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun, Bill Cosby, Quincy Jones and others. To a man and to a woman, they remind us of the world we have overcome and the unprecedented possibilities of the new world before us. And we join with them and all Americans of goodwill in calling all Americans to the exciting possibilities of the new world of the next century.

For today, as in the beginning, we believe that hard work, dedication and perseverance will overcome almost any prejudice and open almost any door.

That was my faith in November 1945, and it's still my faith.

Today, as in 1945, I believe, with my mother, that the only failure is failing to try.

Today, as in 1945, I believe that the greater the obstacle, the greater the triumph and the greater the glory.

It is in that spirit, and with that hope, that we rededicate ourselves to the spirit of the founding and the call of the future.