EBONY MAGAZINE AND LERONE BENNETT JR.: POPULAR BLACK HISTORY IN POSTWAR AMERICA
​(UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS, 2020)

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From its launch in 1945, Ebony magazine was politically and socially influential. However, the magazine also played an important role in educating millions of African Americans about their past.

​Guided by the pen of Lerone Bennett Jr., the magazine’s senior editor and in-house historian, Ebony became a key voice in the popular Black history revival that flourished after World War II. Its content helped push representations of the African American past from the margins to the center of the nation’s cultural and political imagination.

​This fresh and fascinating exploration of Ebony’s political, social, and historical content illuminates the intellectual role of the iconic magazine and its contribution to African American scholarship.

"Expertly chronicles how EBONY magazine and Lerone Bennett Jr. shaped cultural perception of African American history" ​

- Publisher's Weekly

"A well-researched and accessible study situated within the growing field of Black intellectual history...a major contribution to our understanding of what West aptly calls 'popular Black history'"

- Pero Dagbovie, editor of the ​Journal of African American History

MEDIA COVERAGE

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Appearance on NPR / KUT 90.5 show "In Black America" to discuss Ebony Magazine and Lerone Bennett Jr.

Interview about Ebony Magazine and Lerone Bennett Jr. for ​Black Perspectives

Ebony Magazine and Lerone Bennett Jr. featured as part of Brent Staples article on "The Radical Blackness of Ebony ​Magazine."

A HOUSE FOR THE STRUGGLE: THE BLACK PRESS AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT IN CHICAGO
​(UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS, 2022)

This innovative study  offers a bold reappraisal of Chicago's Black press through the lens of the built environment.

​Focusing on leading Black Chicagoan publications such as the Chicago Defender, the Chicago Bee, and EBONY magazine, but drawing on a range of different periodicals and publishing concerns, A House for the Struggle explores the fascinating ways in which Black periodicals used their buildings and publishing plants to advance their editorial ambitions and self-proclaimed role as a 'voice for the race.'  

​As the influence and circulation of Chicago's Black periodicals grew, so too did the size and status of the buildings they inhabited serve as both a concrete symbol of Black protest and a reminder of their influence in shaping the cultural and political landcape of African American urban life on local, national and international scales.

OUR KIND OF HISTORIAN: A BIOGRAPHY OF LERONE BENNETT JR.
​(UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS PRESS, FORTHCOMING)

Journalist, activist, popular historian and public intellectual: Lerone Bennett Jr. left an indelible mark on twentieth century American history and culture.  Rooted in his role as the senior editor of Ebony magazine, but stretching far beyond the boundaries of the Johnson Publishing headquarters in Chicago, Bennett's work and activism positioned him as a prominent advocate for Black America whose work reached an unparalleled number of African American readers.  

This critical biography - the first in-depth study of Bennett's life  - travels with him from his childhood experiences in Jim Crow Mississippi and his time at Morehouse College in Atlanta to his later participation in a dizzying range of Black intellectual and activist networks. Drawing extensively on Bennett's unprocessed archival collections, as well as a range of interviews with former colleagues and confidantes,   Our Kind of Historian recovers his enormous influence  within and unique connection to African American communities across more than half a century of struggle.