A Lesson on the Importance of Storytelling and Preservation

After filing for bankruptcy in April, Johnson Publishing is auctioning off the photo archives of Ebony Magazine. The collection is said to contain over 4 million photographs, most of which document decades of black culture in America. The company sold Ebony, as well as Jet Magazine in 2016, but retained Ebony’s photo archive, which is now valued at nearly $47 million. The auction, which began this past Wednesday, will resume this coming Monday at a Chicago law office.

Washington University in St. Louis professor Jeffrey Q. McCune, Jr., who grew up reading both Ebony and Jet, told CNN;

“I really fear that what we will have is that some collector will take it into their private collection and cut it off from public access. The beauty of Ebony is that Ebony was a public gem.

If these images are lost, if these images are privatized, if these images are somehow destroyed, I think that that type (of loss) is unaffordable. There is power in preservation and, particularly for black life in this country, visual representation is important.”

Hopefully, for black culture, the worst case scenario doesn’t play out. And even if it does, let this be a lesson on the importance of storytelling and the preservation of history and culture. See some of the iconic photographs from the archive below.