Ebony Magazine, the Editorial Left-Wing, and the Reshaping of Black Power in Post-War America, 1954-1998

Ziane, Sid Ahmed (2023) Ebony Magazine, the Editorial Left-Wing, and the Reshaping of Black Power in Post-War America, 1954-1998. Doctoral thesis (PhD), Manchester Metropolitan University.

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Abstract

This thesis explores the manner in which Ebony magazine, its owner John H. Johnson, and his left-wing editors sought to sell, intervene, advocate, and mainstream Black Power in post-war America. The dominant scholarly works have focused more broadly on the glamour of Ebony while overlooking the ways in which this magazine responded, reacted, and often overlapped with Black Power in the 1960s and 1970s. Such an endeavour was quarterbacked by its influential left-wing editors such as Lerone Bennett, David Llorens, and Phyl Garland. Their powerful position in Ebony and at the Johnson Publishing Company (JPC) propelled the magazine to act as a vital forum during Black Power and the modern black liberation struggle. By exploring its multifaceted responses to black activism and the modern black freedom movement in America, this thesis offers new insight into Ebony’s social standing in the post-war era.