While the passing of Ebony and Jet magazines founder John H. Johnson may not have prompted the same outpouring of remembrances and accolades as the death of ABC news anchor Peter Jennings, Johnson is no less worthy of such praise.

John H. Johnson

A prime example of the ability of African Americans to make a dollar out of 15 cents, Johnson took $500 and turned it into a publishing empire. Johnson Publishing Co. Inc. is the largest black-owned publishing company in the world. Ebony is the No. 1 African-American magazine with a monthly readership of 11 million.

If that's all Johnson had done, it would have been an astronomical feat for a man born in Jim Crow-era Arkansas to parents whose own parents had been slaves.

Arguably among the first if not the first niche marketer, Johnson -- knowing that African Americans loved to look good, smell good and dress well -- added the Fashion Fair Cosmetic line and produced the internationally known Ebony Fashion Fair fashion show.

Johnson's legacy, however, is about more than circulation numbers, pressed powder and being listed among the Forbes 400.

Inspired by the growing number of middle-class blacks in Chicago, he sought to offer an alternative image to that of the downtrodden, poverty-encased, crime-infested African Americans who seemed to dominate the pages of white-owned mainstream publications.

While an environment of crime and poverty may have been the reality for many African Americans, Johnson, who died Monday at the age of 87, knew then that there was so much more worthy of showcasing within the black community. Our pride, our beauty, our dignity was found between the pages of Ebony and Jet. Our accomplishments, ignored by others, had a home in these publications.

When I was a little colored girl growing up outside Philadelphia in the 1960s, black women didn't grace the covers of magazines like Glamour and Mademoiselle. They didn't appear in ads for shampoo or lipstick in those magazines.

But they did in Ebony.

The magazine taught us how to dress, how to cook, how to take care of ourselves.

Rarely were we seen on television. But when we were, Jet magazine's television listings in the back made sure we knew about it.

For many, it is difficult if not impossible to imagine a world in which no one in the media looks like them. It was a reality, however, for so many of us growing up during that time. I vividly recall, watching television programs just to catch a glimpse of someone with my skin tone and my hair texture.

We'd wait anxiously for that one lone black tap dancer on "The Lawrence Welk Show" or for the next episode of "Julia" or the rare showing of a movie that featured a black cast or Sidney Poitier.

There was even a time when we were a novelty on game shows. But whenever one of those occasions arose, we'd yell out to the kitchen, "Mommy, hurry up, there's a colored woman on 'The Price Is Right.' " My mother never got past using the term "colored."

If we'd only had the mainstream media to go by, we may never have realized how beautiful we really were, how hard we worked, that we went to college, that we could write, that we could love, that we had a past beyond slavery.

Ebony and Jet gave that to us.

My best friend Marylynn Harris, who lives in Houston, sent me an e-mail about the impact the magazines had in her life:

"I had read every Ebony and Jet as a little girl and into womanhood and wore my makeup, hair and clothes like the people in these publications. I quoted statements I heard in Ebony and Jet and always saved to attend the Ebony Fashion Fair Show when it came to my city. It was all a source of PRIDE within me that I valued."

In nearly every African-American beauty parlor, barbershop or home, you could find an Ebony or Jet or both.

If I missed an edition at home, I'd catch up with it at the barbershop around the corner where my brothers got their hair cut. Folks kept the magazines for years. I learned about how African Americans lived in previous generations courtesy of the pages of old Ebony and Jet magazines.

I was struck speechless as I stared at the photos of the battered, bloated body of Emmitt Till that appeared in a Jet magazine I found one day.

I was awed by the radiance of Dorothy Dandridge, saddened by a story on the death of Diahann Carroll's husband, and amazed at how much Donna Summer's daughter looked like her.

I learned all this from reading Ebony.

It wasn't just about entertainers, though. There were doctors, lawyers, chemists, engineers, activists, elected officials -- all kind of folks just movin' on up, as Curtis Mayfield would say.

We were winners. And Mr. Johnson made sure through his publications that we knew it.