Ebony, a monthly magazine for the African American market, was founded by John H. Johnson and has been published since the autumn of 1945. A digest-sized sister magazine, Jet, is also published by Johnson Publishing.
The early issues often featured celebrities such as Lena Horne and Dorothy Dandridge and Michael Jackson on its covers. Constantly upbeat, like its generic contemporary Life, it covered African-American issues, personalities, and interests in a positive light. National corporations featured black models driving cars and drinking soft drinks in ads used for issues of Ebony, which was the first magazine to feature such advertisements.
One of the co-editors was Hans Massaquoi, author of the autobiography Destined to Witness, a book about his youth in Nazi Germany as a black boy. The book had been on the top of the bestseller list of the German weekly Der Spiegel for many months .
