This has nothing to do with music but, since a lot of us grew up with an Ebony in the house. We need to pay a little respect.

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*Publisher John H. Johnson, the creator of Ebony and Jet magazines who started his empire with a $500 loan secured by his mother’s furniture, has died at the age of 87. No further details were given of his death as of press time.

(BET Founder & Chairman, Bob Johnson, reacts to the death of John H. Johnson.)

Born into poverty on Jan. 19, 1918, in Arkansas, Johnson took the $500 loan and built a publishing and cosmetics conglomerate. He launched Ebony in November of 1945, building it from an initial circulation of 25,000 to 1.9 million in 1997. Named by his wife Eunice, Ebony was created to counter stereotypical portrayals of blacks in white-owned newspapers, magazines and broadcast media.

With African American incomes lagging far behind that of white Americans, the idea of a black publishing company was widely dismissed at the time. In fact, civil rights leader Roy Wilkins advised Johnson against the venture. (Wilkins later admitted to giving Johnson bad advice.)

Johnson started Jet magazine in 1951. Both Ebony and Jet broke new ground by bringing positive images of African Americans into mass-market publication. Johnson also encouraged corporations to use black models in advertising targeted toward black consumers.

"We try to seek out good things, even when everything seems bad," Johnson once said in explaining the magazine's purpose. "We look for breakthroughs, we look for people who have made it, who have succeeded against the odds, who have proven somehow that long shots do come in."

Johnson also lobbied white companies to advertise within the pages of his magazines. He dispatched an ad salesman to Detroit every week for 10 years before an auto manufacturer agreed to advertise in Ebony.

"We couldn't do it then by marching, and we couldn't do it by threatening," Johnson said of gaining advertisers. "We had to persuade people that it was in their best interest to reach out to black consumers in a positive way."

The Johnson Publishing Co. Inc., according to its web site, is the world's largest black-owned and-operated publishing company. It also includes Fashion Fair Cosmetics and a book division.

Johnson’s journey began in Chicago, where his family relocated when he was 15. He attended the University of Chicago and Northwestern University. While working at the black-owned Supreme Life Insurance Co., where he began as a clerk, Johnson founded Johnson Publishing Co. in 1942.

Johnson used Supreme Life's mailing list to offer discount charter subscriptions of the company’s first magazine, Negro Digest, a journal that condensed articles of interest to blacks and published the poems and short stories of black writers.

To persuade a distributor to take the magazine, he got co-workers to ask for it at newsstands on Chicago's South Side. Friends bought most of the copies, convincing dealers the magazine was in demand, while Johnson reimbursed the friends and resold the copies they had bought.

Johnson mimicked the tactic in New York, Philadelphia and Detroit, and within a year, Negro Digest was selling 50,000 copies a month.

Besides his wife, Johnson is survived by a daughter, Linda Johnson Rice, president of Johnson Publishing.

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