Council Mourns the Passing of John Johnson

The Council sent condolences to the family of Dr. John H. Johnson, the creator of EBONY and JET magazines and chairman of the Johnson Publishing Company. Dr. Johnson rose from poverty, becoming a media titan in the span of six decades. Dr. Johnson’s rags to riches meteoric rise took him from welfare stamps and poverty to being the first African American named on the Forbes list of the 400 wealthiest Americans. A pioneer of black media and journalism, he was honored countless times by the publishing industry; in 1972, Johnson was named Publisher of the Year by the Magazine Publishers Association and in 1974 the National Newspaper Publishers Association named him the "Most Outstanding Black Publisher in History." In 2003, Baylor University named him the "The Greatest Minority Entrepreneur in U.S. History" and Howard University named its communications school after Dr. Johnson. In 1995, on the 50th anniversary of the founding of EBONY magazine, Dr. Johnson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honor, by President Bill Clinton. According to President Clinton, Johnson gave "African-Americans a voice and a face, in his words, 'a new sense of somebody-ness,' of who they were and what they could do, at a time when they were virtually invisible in mainstream American culture."

Dr. Johnson was 87 years old and died at Northwestern Memorial Hospital after an extended illness.