With a paltry loan from his mother, John H. Johnson started Ebony magazine 70 years ago as a tactile place for black Americans to roost, rest, feel safe, get news and information specific to our American experiences and to mostly see ourselves well-represented in a country that usually — and still sometimes does — renders us invisible.
We are a long way now from all that warm racial sentimentality.
Editor Kierna Mayo recently told CNN she did not get much sleep in the days leading up to the release of the November issue.
That’s because the slaying of sacred cows requires as much mental fortitude as it does physical energy, and when you’re black (and a woman) and you are dismantling a cultural hero and icon, there will be no rest for the weary.
The headline “The Family Issue(s)” accompanies a 1980s-era photograph of the cast of The Cosby Show. They are depicted beneath a pane of shattered glass, the fracturing point — the bull’s eye — directly over Bill Cosby’s face.
The good thing to come out of this is that the folks who needed waking up the most seem to be the ones exhibiting the most anger toward Mayo and the magazine.
The overriding question of the article, according to Mayo, is: Should we or can we ever separate Bill Cosby the alleged serial rapist from Bill Cosby the creator of the Huxtables and all those post-crack dreams of upper-middle class comfort?
Well, if viewers cannot separate fact from fiction — which so many of us surprisingly cannot — then those people should look away from the magazine, all the brouhaha surrounding it and any and all future allegations and lawsuits against Bill Cosby.
On the magazine’s Facebook page, where all real conversations happen these days, folks are taking the magazine to task, mostly missing salient points about sexual deviance, misogyny and the abuse of power in the black family of man.
Facebook commenter Tahani Shanee called the magazine “out of touch, silly and lazy” and “not bold enough to logically attack Cosby the man so you crack the fascade (sic) of this show that meant so much to America.”
Someone or something calling itself Until No More wrote: “Where is 7th Heaven…or Full House? Did you write about Jared of Subway and more. Though your cover is profound, I find it to be also harsh, crass, demeaning and you’ve really left me in a flummoxed state of mind. Wow! Get it together Ebony.”
Until No More seems to be talking to itself at the end when it says “get it together.” The admission of being flummoxed is a telling one.
Most compelling is this thing a lot of black folks do when the topics of bad black behavior come up: We look around and ask where the noose is for our white counterparts, when the forum, the characters in question and the circumstances are as black as Atlanta.
This is a classic Colored Dodge Move. (You’re welcome, white people.)
In a black magazine tasked with reflecting and dissecting black life — the shiny and the dark — there isn’t any room or need for white sociopathic behavior because, believe me, we have enough of our own to keep Ebony producing controversial covers until Jesus returns.
What is most pleasantly surprising to me is that Ebony spent decades being full of enough Marshmallow Fluff to give every black American who touched it diabetes.
I was surprised Ebony stayed solvent long enough to find its 21st-century footing and to tackle issues relevant to real black people on the ground and not become merely another empty glossy magazine espousing the lifestyles of the moderately wealthy and those with mediocre talent because, well, there are enough white magazines doing that for all of us.
So what has happened and what, hopefully, will continue to happen is that Ebony has and is remaking itself on the backs of the failings of black Americans and the failings of America to stop killing black Americans.
The magazine no longer solely praises the plethora of network shows cast largely with blacks or produced by blacks; it now features stark, creative covers centered on race, power and black Hollywood, including one called “We Are Trayvon” with a subhead “Save Our Sons,” and another commemorating President Barack Obama’s first inauguration, simply emblazoned with “Mr. President.”
Ebony for years was the black magazine we’d take into the bathroom to flip through the pictures for a quick escape to see pictures of Lena Horne’s house, Sammy Davis, Jr.’s swimming pool, Flip Wilson’s cars or Josephine Baker’s “rainbow tribe” of adopted children.
However, it was a strong outlet during the Civil Rights Movement and all the subsequent assassinations of black leaders and black-friendly white leaders. Then it fell off again, caving to the whims of Johnson, who was clearly burned out. Then his daughter inherited the magazine and seemed content and dead-set on making it a giant press release of unsigned, praise-heavy “articles” on celebrities to whom she was somehow indebted.
Hey, it was the 1980s and the 1990s, about the time Bill Cosby came along with his factory-sealed family of witty, pithy, pretty kids and his unbelievably accomplished, cool-headed, ageless and long-suffering wife.
Strangely — and this is for the people who cannot sift Bill Cosby from Heathcliff Huxtable — one of Cosby’s most ardent accusers is an actress who had a recurring role as one of Huxtable’s pregnant patients whom he’d always see in that creepy basement office of his.
To hear her tell it, Cosby once allegedly threw himself on her on that set and later allegedly in his dressing room. So if you’re having a hard time distinguishing fact from fiction in this Shakespearean tale of two warring selves, then use this scenario to make believe that Cosby/Huxtable was cheating on Camille/Claire with his patient/an actress.
Whatever this Ebony cover and cover story mean to us individually or as community or family members, I will be going out to buy it if for nothing more than as a commemorative keepsake.
I treat a lot of magazines that way:
When Whitney Houston died, when Michael Jackson died, when Nelson Mandela died, when Barack Obama was elected to his first term, when Trayvon Martin was murdered,
I went out and bought up every single magazine with those people’s images on the front covers.
Why?
Because black in America is still treated like a special box that can long go unchecked, so when something extraordinary happens among us or to one of us, we are worthy of collecting so we can look back and say: This happened.
CONTACT KATHY Y. WILSON: letters@citybeat.com
This article appears in Oct 21-27, 2015.