July 25, 2019 | Read Time: 2 minutes
A treasure trove of historic photographs chronicling decades of African-American life will be available to researchers, journalists, and the public thanks to a consortium of foundations.
The Ford, MacArthur, and Andrew W. Mellon foundations and the J. Paul Getty Trust have teamed up to purchase the photographic archive of Johnson Publishing Company, publisher of Ebony and Jet magazines, for $30 million. The acquisition, which is pending court approval, is part of an auction of the company’s assets in connection with its bankruptcy filing.
The foundation consortium will donate the archives to the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Getty Research Institute, and other leading cultural institutions.
“This archive is a national treasure and one of tremendous importance to the telling of black history in America,” Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, said in a written statement. “We felt it was imperative to preserve these images, to give them the exposure they deserve, and make them readily available to the public.”
Jet and Ebony captured images at critical points in American history. In 1955, Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African-American boy from Chicago, was kidnapped and brutally murdered by white men in Money, Miss. At the request of Till’s mother, Jet magazine ran photographs of his open-casket funeral that showed the boy’s mutilated body. The images shocked the nation and are credited with helping to mobilize the civil-rights movement.
In 1969, Ebony magazine photographer Moneta Sleet Jr. won a Pulitzer Prize for a photograph he took the year before of Coretta Scott King and her daughter Bernice at Martin Luther King Jr.’s funeral.
But the magazines also featured photography that celebrated famous African-Americans like Muhammad Ali and Billie Holiday and captured the everyday joys and struggles of black life.
“Ebony and Jet magazine helped shape our nation’s history, allowing Americans — of all colors — to see the full panorama of the African-American experience,” Lonnie Bunch, the founding director of the Museum of African American History and Culture and secretary of the Smithsonian, said in a written statement. “Together, our organizations will ensure these images, stories, and the history of these publications are well-preserved and available to the public and future generations.”
