Summary
In the midst of segregation, with the stereotypical media portrayal of African Americans as shiftless, impoverished, downtrodden, ignorant, ugly, at best talented minstrels, [John H Johnson] saw a people of beauty, of potential and of dignity. He decided to start a magazine that would hold a mirror to that reality. Other Black leaders warned him there was no market, no way poor and beleaguered African Americans could support such a magazine. As an African American, he couldn't get a loan to start a business, so his mother put her new furniture up as collateral for a $500 loan.
The magazines provided Blacks with reports of success--Black writers, athletes, leaders, poets, scientists, artists, actors and actresses, businessmen and women. "We wanted to give Blacks a sense of sombodiness," Johnson said, "a new sense of self-respect. We wanted to tell them who they were and what they could do."Johnson literally transformed the way we saw ourselves, and in doing so, empowered us. He challenged over three centuries of oppression--slavery, a people defined as three-fifths human in the Constitution, segregation. He showed that we had the potential to be what we wanted to be. And that in turn made the shackles of segregation unbearable. Having created the kindling for the Civil Rights Movement, Johnson helped create the spark in 1955, when Jet published the photo of Chicago teenager Emmett Till's battered face after he was lynched in Mississippi for allegedly whistling at a White woman.See the full content of this document
Extract
A Giant Among Us
A giant has gone to his rest. Last week, John H Johnson, the founder and leader of Johnson Publishing Company, the world's largest African American owned and operated publishing house, died at 87. Johnson was a visionary, an explorer, a builder ...
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