As you can gather, we’re rather jolly folks, we EBONY editors. We like to look at the zesty side of life. Sure, you can get all hot and bothered about the race question (and don’t think we don’t) but not enough is said about all the swell things we Negroes can do and will accomplish. EBONY will try to mirror the happier side of Negro life—the positive, everyday achievements from Harlem to Hollywood. But when we talk about race as the No. 1 problem of America, we’ll talk turkey.”
— from page 1, Vol. 1, No. 1, EBONY
Important note: 1945’s “talk turkey” is equivalent to 2015’s “Keep it 100.”
But when we talk about race as the No. 1 problem of America, we’ll be painfully honest.
Magazine makers, the lot of us, all belong to a special fraternity, if you will. It’s impossible to create a publication of this magnitude in 2015, one with origins in 1945, and not be curious about those who came before you—their methods, madness and motivations. As I thumbed through hundreds of the vaulted archival issues of EBONY in preparation for this one—the 70th-anniversary commemorative edition—I noticed uncanny similarities between our forebearers and us.
If there is a single tie that binds the disparate teams responsible for creating multiple generations of EBONY, however, it is, for all intents and purposes, what can only be described as an overwhelming love of
our people.
Read more in the December 2015/January 2016 issue of EBONY Magazine.
