JPC and the Black World: Company's Magazines Championed Freedom of Blacks at Home and Abroad

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Fifty years ago, at the outset of Johnson Publishing Co., the only independent Black nations in Africa were Ethiopia and Liberia. The rest of the continent was teeming with millions struggling against their colonial masters and yearning to be free. The fledgling companys magazines wasted no time in joining that freedom struggle by chipping away at the stereotypical view of Africans and West Indians whom a racist White press had relegated to "Third World" status and characterized as childlike, primitive and incapable of self-rule. Today, with political freedom a reality in most of Africa and the Caribbean, many indigenous leaders credit JPC with consistently portraying them and their …