Short answers, pulled from the story.
John H. Johnson founded Ebony magazine in Chicago in 1945. The first issue was published on the 1st of November 1945, with an initial press run of 25,000 copies that sold out completely. Johnson created it through his Johnson Publishing Company to address African-American issues and interests in a positive and self-affirming way.
Ebony was named by John H. Johnson's wife, Eunice Walker Johnson, who chose the name thinking of the dark wood called ebony. The magazine was modeled on the format of Life magazine.
Junior Bridgeman, a Milwaukee Bucks alumnus and Black businessman, purchased Ebony and its sister publication Jet for $14 million in December 2020. He bought both publications from CVG Group after they went bankrupt. Under Bridgeman, the publication relaunched in a digital format in March 2021.
By its 40th anniversary in November 1985, Ebony had a circulation of 1.7 million. During the 1980s, marketers estimated it reached more than 40 percent of African-American adults in the United States, a figure no other general-interest magazine had matched at the time.
Ebony's "100 Most Influential Blacks in America" list began in 1963, took a hiatus, and resumed in 1971. It recognizes those who made the greatest impact in the African-American community during the year, focusing primarily on entertainment figures, politicians, philanthropists, and entrepreneurs. Researchers have noted that Black scholars, teachers, and higher-education administrators rarely appear on the list.
CVG Group, which purchased Ebony from Johnson Publishing in 2016, suspended the print edition on the 24th of May 2019 after years of financial difficulties. The company had already laid off a third of its staff in 2017 and moved editorial operations from Chicago to Los Angeles. Johnson Publishing filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation in 2019.