Hidden Figures: Eunice W. Johnson

Eunice Walker Johnson (April 4, 1916 – January 3, 2010) was the wife of publisher John H. Johnson and an executive at Johnson Publishing Company. Johnson was best known as the founder and director of the Ebony Fashion Fair, which was started in the 1950s as a hospital fundraiser, and became an annual fashion tour that highlighted fashion for African-American women that ran until a year before her death.

Born Eunice Walker on April 4, 1916, in Selma, Alabama, she graduated with a degree in sociology from Talladega College in 1938. During her matriculation at college Eunice joined Delta Sigma Theta. She met her future husband, John H. Johnson, in 1940 while she was attending Loyola University Chicago and was married after she earned her master's degree the following year.

Together with her husband, she established The Negro Digest in 1942, a magazine styled after Reader's Digest. The rapid growth of their first publication encouraged them to create Ebony, a monthly designed to emulate Life and its style of boldly-photographed front covers. Johnson had been the one who suggested that the magazine be named for the dark wood. By the time of her death, Ebony reached a readership of 1.25 million, while its weekly companion Jet reached a circulation of 900,000.

The Ebony Fashion Tour began as a fundraiser that she created in 1958 for a hospital in New Orleans. In its half century of existence, the tour visited 200 cities across the United States, Canada and the Caribbean, raising over $50 million for charity, and the tour was a pioneer in using African-American models on the runway and in helping to highlight the works of African-American designers. Building on her difficulties in finding cosmetics suited to the skin tones of her models, Johnson first began mixing makeup colors for the varied tones of her Black models, and then created Ebony Fashion Fair Cosmetics in 1973 as a line of makeup that would be sold in leading department stores.

Stars like Leontyne Price, Diahann Carroll and Aretha Franklin appeared in the company’s ads, and within three years, the growing popularity of Fashion Fair Cosmetics prompted Revlon to introduce the Polished Ambers line for black skins, Avon to start Shades of Beauty and Max Factor to produce Beautiful Bronzes.

Johnson died of kidney failure January 3, 2010, at the age of 93 at her home in Chicago. She is survived by her daughter Linda Johnson Rice, chairwoman and chief executive of Johnson Publishing, as well as by a granddaughter.

#EuniceJohnson #HiddenFigures

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Links:

'Eunice Johnson Dies at 93; Gave Ebony Its Name:'
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/bus...

'Black Power Dressing:'
https://www.wmagazine.com/story/eunic...

'In Memoriam: 'Ebony' Matriarch Eunice W. Johnson:'
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/st...

'André Leon Talley on the Ebony Fashion Fair’s Auction of Eunice Johnson’s Collection:'
https://www.vogue.com/article/alt-on-...

'Ebony Co-Founder Eunice Johnson Dies:'
http://www.blackenterprise.com/small-...

'EBONY FOUNDER EUNICE W. JOHNSON LIVED A LIFE OF SMART MOVES:'
http://adage.com/article/special-repo...

'The Haute Couture of Eunice Johnson:'
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/hermen...

'How a Couture Pioneer Changed Fashion:'
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014...

'Eunice Johnson And EBONY’s Fashion Fair Clothing Exhibition At Chicago History:'
http://museumofuncutfunk.com/2012/06/...

'Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Mourns Beloved Member and Fashion Pioneer, Eunice W. Johnson:'
http://www.deltasigmatheta.org/downlo...

Eunice W. Johnson (Wikipedia):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eunice_...