Race/Related: A Last Look at Ebony’s Photo Archives

The magazine's entire photo archive was offered at an auction in Chicago.

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Friday, July 19, 2019

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Lauretta Charlton

I was lucky enough to grow up in a household with many examples of strong black men and women, and leafing through copies of Ebony magazine as a kid in California was central to that experience.

Everything about it, from the journalism to the advertising, signaled to me that black life in America was thriving. We were great. I could be great.

This week, the magazine's entire photo archive, including more than four million prints and negatives, was offered at an auction. There were multiple bids for the collection, but no clear winner emerged. The auction will continue on Monday in Chicago.

Julie Bosman, a National correspondent in Chicago, writes about this remarkable collection in the story below, a collaboration with Past Tense.

And, last week we asked readers if they had ever been told to "go back." Some 16,000 responses flooded in on our website, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. You can read some of them here.

Stay cool.

PAST TENSE

A Last Look at Ebony's Archives, Before They're Sold

By JULIE BOSMAN

Moneta Sleet Jr./Johnson Publishing Company

CHICAGO — For months, a stream of visitors — curious, cultured and deep-pocketed — have slipped into a drab brick warehouse on the West Side of Chicago. They have been escorted upstairs in a creaky elevator to a windowless room and handed blue gloves to wear.

Then they have lingered for hours or days over the most significant collection of photographs depicting African-American life in the 20th century.

In one folder, there is Coretta Scott King, cradling her daughter Bernice from a pew at the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s funeral. In another, Billie Holiday stands on a city sidewalk with a cigarette and a faraway expression. One box holds a black-and-white print of Ray Charles hanging out with a Chicago nightclub owner and playing dominoes, as the typewritten caption noted, "by feel."

This week, one of the visitors to the warehouse could walk away with it all: the entire photo archive from Ebony and Jet, the iconic sister magazines. The collection of photographs, more than four million prints and negatives, will be offered at an auction on Wednesday conducted privately at a law firm downtown.

The actress and singer Pearl Bailey, center, with the dancer Carmen De Lavallade on the set of the musical film “Carmen Jones,” circa 1954. Ms. Bailey played Frankie, the title character's best friend.
Howard Morehead/Johnson Publishing Company

Whoopi Goldberg in 1988. The next year, she shot “Ghost,” for which she became the second African-American woman to win an Academy Award for acting.
Isaac Sutton/Johnson Publishing Company

The comedian Redd Foxx, best known for his role in the sitcom “Sanford and Son,” posing in front of the Redd Foxx Hair Salon in Los Angeles in an undated photograph. Mr. Foxx cofounded the shop with Roger Simon, a barber whose clients included Duke Ellington, Sugar Ray Robinson and Nat King Cole.
Isaac Sutton/Johnson Publishing Company

Playing dominoes by feel, Ray Charles in a game with Herman Roberts.
David Jackson/Johnson Publishing Company

Word of the auction has stirred fascination as the future of the remarkable collection, a bittersweet reminder of the essential place the magazines once held in black homes, hangs in the balance. Historians, alarmed by the potential sale, say that the collection is full of cultural treasures that should be opened to the public. People close to John H. Johnson, the founder of Ebony and Jet who died in 2005, say he would have eventually wanted it to be available for people to see.

Ebony and Jet were practically part of the décor in African-American homes during the civil rights movement and beyond, their pages filled with black musicians, fashion models, playwrights and ordinary people who were mostly ignored by the white press. The photographs had a rare intimacy. African-American celebrities allowed the magazines' photographers an especially close view of their lives, inviting them to witness moments of struggle and joy in funerals and marches, honeymoons and cotillions.

To see more photos from the Ebony archive, click here.

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