Essence founder releases memoir chronicling magazine’s beginnings

8th July 2014   ·   0 Comments

By Mason Harrison
Contributing Writer

tma payday loan ‘My grandmother was my introduction to the empowerment of Black women. She bought 110 acres of land in 1927 and believed that hard work killed nobody.’

More than four decades after he launched America’s first magazine for Black women and now 20 years after the creation of a music festival that continues to leave its mark and a billion-dollar imprint on the financial health of the city of New Orleans, the co-founder of Essence magazine is revealing in a new tell-all, often personal memoir, the story behind the magazine’s tumultuous history.

“I have been working on this book since 2006,” says Edward Lewis, best payday loan without credit check after selling Essence to Time, Inc., after decades at the helm of the magazine and as the last of the four original co-founders of the publication still involved in the business. “You know, a lot of women may not know that it was four Black men who started Essence,” says Lewis. “I think they should know that; they should know that there were Black men who thought enough of Black women to create a magazine for them.”

Lewis tells of his love and admiration for Black women in The Man from Essence: Creating a Magazine for Black Women as a product of spending summers with payday loans round rock his grandmother in rural Virginia and watching the women in his family care for future generations. “My grandmother was my introduction to the empowerment of Black women. She bought 110 acres of land in 1927 and believed that hard work killed nobody. She didn’t believe there was a distinction between which chores were for boys or for girls; there was none of that. Everyone did everything. So, growing up I knew how to do all sorts of things.”

Lewis says his experiences as a child drove him to produce a magazine that would celebrate “the beauty, intelligence and aspirations” of Black women and in 1970, after a payday loans in north olmsted oh meeting in the late 1960s to discuss the need for the creation of Black-owned businesses, Essence hit newsstands across the country with an original printing of just 50,000 copies. Today, the magazine boasts a monthly circulation of more than one million and readership north of eight million men and women.

“I was looking to do something special for the 25th anniversary of Essence in 1995,” says Lewis, “when George Wein from the Jazz & Heritage Festival presented the idea of doing a festival in New Orleans and idea of doing something connected to music in the city appealed to me.” Today, the Essence Music payday advance beltline rd irving tx Festival brings hundreds of thousands of visitors to New Orleans, boosting the city’s economy during the slow tourist season by millions of dollars.

Last year, analysts pegged the financial impact of the festival at more than $230 million, with economic figures above $130 million in 2012, in excess of $170 million in 2011, and more than $180 million in 2010, according to data released from the mayor’s office of cultural economy. “The economic impact of the festival since its inception is close to $10 billion,” Lewis says. “I’m told that sales during Essence at the Saks store at Canal Place are akin to Christmas sales.”

Lewis’ work cash advance in eufaula al in publishing has amounted to the creation of a 40-year, monthly love letter to Black women and his book chronicles the magazine’s ups and downs, its controversies, and financial troubles.

“When we started this publication, there was no such thing as Black women—there were Negro women—and now we have amazing examples of Black womanhood like Beyonce and a wonderful first lady in Michelle Obama; and when I look at a dark-skinned woman like Lupita Nyong’o being referred to as beautiful by national media outlets I know how far we’ve come.”

This article originally published in the July 7, 2014 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.