Published continuously since 1945, Ebony is the largest U.S. mass-circulation magazine written by and for African Americans. With a circulation of more than two million, the full-color monthly, as well as the digest-size Jet magazine, is published by the privately held Johnson Publishing Company, one of the nation's largest black-owned businesses.

Ebony's first issue appeared on November 1, 1945, the brainchild of John Harold Johnson (1918–), who had been born into poverty in Arkansas. Johnson had acquired his publishing skills as the editor of a weekly news digest for the Supreme Liberty Life Insurance Company, owned by Harry H. Pace (1884–1943). With a $500 loan using his mother's furniture as collateral (that is, pledging that the lender could have the furniture if he could not repay the loan), Johnson founded the Negro Digest in 1942. By the end of World War II (1939–45), he was envisioning a magazine that would present positive images to...