The Personal Side of the Johnson Publishing Company

Johnson Publishing Company (JPC) is best known for its groundbreaking publications on Black life, but its influence also extended to the people who powered the institution itself.

The relationship between the company, founded in 1942, and its staff was a symbiotic one; JPC shaped the lives of the employees just as they molded the magazines. “It was a close-knit group, and very much a family,” says Ann Saunders, whose mother, Doris E. Saunders, joined Johnson Publishing Company in 1949 to establish the library. “The people who worked for JPC were not just working on behalf of their community, but they were their community,” Ann Saunders says. “JPC founder John H. Johnson had a bigger vision of what he could do, and my mother felt like she could help him do that. And so that became her mission.”

As a rare example of a Black owned and operated-company (particularly of its magnitude at the time), the Johnson Publishing Company staff had the rare experience of working at a place that was specifically designed for — and in the image of — the Black community. This meant that the business ascended beyond simply being a space for colleagues to work with each other and became a place for personal relationships to blossom as well.

Creating a unique company culture

Bonding activities among staff included an annual company picnic at locations like the Indiana Dunes’ sandy beaches, attending the Ebony Fashion Fair show as a group when it stopped in Chicago, and even competitive sports. “Dad used to tell me that when Duke Ellington’s band came through town, the staff of Ebony and Jet would go out and play softball with the Ellington bandmates at a park across from the building,” says Joy T. Bennett, former longtime Ebony editor. “So the office was not only a family for Johnson Publishing Company, but a family for Black entertainers and Black politicians who called it home.”

Bennett calls herself “a bonafide JPC baby.” Her parents, Gloria and Lerone Bennett Jr., met in the 1950s while working at the company as an intern at Jet and an editor at Ebony, respectively. “Mr. Johnson always boasted that whoever he put together, stayed together,” Bennett says with a laugh. Every year on her parents’ wedding anniversary, Johnson would send them flowers. “They were good friends,” she said of her parents, their employer, and their coworkers. “It was a very insulated environment because it was only them; there was no model for this.”

Saunders, who was Johnson’s goddaughter and would go on to intern at the company across several summers, was one of the flower girls in the Bennett wedding. “So there was that kind of interaction,” she says. (Johnson also attended her parents’ wedding.)

Recently, Bennett discovered a baby shower card from Era Belle Thompson, trailblazing journalist and international editor for Ebony, to her mother (Thompson’s assistant at the time).

Bennett discovered a baby shower card from Era Belle Thompson, trailblazing journalist and international editor for Ebony, to her mother (Thompson’s assistant at the time). The card describes a newborn Bennett as “the newest Ebony editor.” When you worked for JPC, Mr. J. kind of owned you,” Bennett says. “I know personally that if you had a tragedy, he paid for funerals. If you had a fire, he wrote a personal check to cover it. That’s the type of boss he was, that’s the type of man he was. He was involved in your life, and it inspired the type of loyalty he enjoyed from staff.”

Alexa Rice, granddaughter of John and Eunice Johnson, fondly recalls growing up in Chicago and strangers being excited to meet her, telling her how much they loved her family. “I was so fortunate and grateful to see the best of Black people — and never anything negative or discriminatory or prejudiced or stereotypical,” she says. Having unrestricted access to the print magazines her grandparents’ company produced in the household served as a consistent, physical reminder “of all the things that my community is doing to push us forward and to keep moving this country forward,” she adds. “I had tangible evidence of who we really were as a people.”

Rice briefly interned at JPC, casually moonlighting every now and then, and remembers being particularly pleased when she found her parents’ wedding featured in a print issue published before she was born.

Robert E. Johnson’s connection to JPC is through his father, Bob Johnson (no relation to John Johnson). Bob Johnson first joined the company as the managing editor of Hue, a shorter-lived title published from 1953 to 1959. By 1960 he was managing editor at Jet, and by 1970 he had been promoted to executive editor. By 1980 he’d added “Associate Publisher at Johnson Publishing Company” to his title. These consistent and gradual jumps up the masthead — illustrate the loyalty staffers had to the company and the opportunities Johnson continued to offer JPC’s network of talent.

Designing a special space

Growing up, the children of JPC staffers would often visit the company headquarters in Chicago, making the offices a hybrid work-and-social space for the families, friends, and interview subjects. One of the first offices was located at 1820 S. Michigan Avenue, a renovated funeral home whose opening was a major milestone and cause for celebration.

In 1973, the iconic building opened at 820 S. Michigan Avenue, built from the ground up and designed by architect John W. Moutoussamy. The design was quintessentially ’70s modern, featuring bold colors, groovy woodgrains, and artwork by major Black artists. It was “the only building with a driveway on Michigan Avenue,” Rice says.

“It was a real showcase piece of architecture—but it took a lot of determination in the context of the times,” Robert Johnson shares. According to John Johnson’s 1992 biography, Succeeding Against the Odds: The Autobiography of a Great Businessman, despite his being able to buy the office building outright, to just tour the space he worked with a white decoy who pretended he was purchasing the property while Johnson disguised himself as a janitor.

Designing an office building that served as a sanctuary for the community more broadly “was really out of necessity, because even though my granddad was an established businessman, these white folks weren’t letting him into their clubs,” Rice says. “It’s a story of Black people making a way out of no way, and being able to do for yourself because other people aren’t really coming to your aid.”

Notables who joined the grand opening of the office building included Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks. “For the early part of the building’s years, there were tours,” says Joy Bennett. She remembers seeing groups of students and adult visitors coming to see the JPC headquarters, whose 11 floors were each built around a different color scheme and divided by publications and their staffs, along with broader JPC department areas—Fashion Fair, sales, advertising, and so on.

The 11th floor was Johnson’s domain, replete with a barbershop and workout area. “Mr. Johnson said all his good friends were in the building, so he didn’t really have to go out for anything,” says Bennett. She remembers seeing the founder and his editors discussing the contents of future issues and cracking jokes in equal measure.

The cafeteria was legendary, known for its beloved soul food menu that celebrities, politicians, and friends of the company would specifically visit the office building to enjoy. “They had family days where employees could bring their families for lunch,” Bennett says, adding: “Mr. J. had everything in house for his employees.”

Alexa Rice would often have lunch with her grandfather in the cafeteria, or on his private floor. Her mother Linda Johnson Rice’s office was located on the 9th, which also held a small room in the middle of the floor dedicated to some really special photography and moments for JPC—awards that her granddad had received and images of important Black figures like Coretta Scott King.

Despite the camaraderie on view within the walls of the office, Ann Saunders notes that staff didn’t often spend time with John and Eunice Johnson outside of work. “We weren’t in the same social stratosphere as they were,” she says. Saunders’s mother, Doris, worked as the highest-ranking research librarian in the city of Chicago’s public library system, and Saunders remembers her as being passionate about building Black collections and always having an eye toward the future. “She understood, early on, the importance of documenting what the company was building to serve as both a resource and an archive.”

The soul of a company lives in the people who build it

JPC editors, publishers, interns, and librarians across generations shaped not only a media empire, but also the cultural consciousness of the country—one that remains relevant today.

“This history and archive, given the state of our country, is probably as important now as it was in 1945,” Rice muses. She says her awareness of how impactful her family’s magazines and related enterprises were to American culture was gradual. “As school progresses, you learn more about Black history, and you can’t talk about Black history in the United States without talking about Ebony and Jet.”

Robert Johnson remembers his father’s humility as an editor and publisher at the company, which belied how significant the company was to American culture. Eventually, though, he caught on. “I did realize it spoke, and how far-reaching it was, and the importance to all African Americans here and even overseas — it had a real impact.”