Johnson Publishing Company which owned Ebony and Jet magazines recently filed for bankruptcy and now its assets have to be sold. One of those prized assets is the Ebony photo archives, which is up for auction and the opening bid is at $13 million.
Actually that dollar amount does not surprise me at all because I think the archives are priceless actually. How can you put a price on the thousands and thousands of photos of celebrities, prominent people and influencers? You can't. Not only that, I'm sure the collection includes photos of everyday human beings who made some sort of difference in their community or across the nation and even the world.
We will always remember Ebony and Jet magazines sprawled across the coffee table in the front room of our homes. They weren't just magazines, they were a symbol of the African-American experience for most of the 20th century.