Magazine Publisher Is Eulogized as a Shaper of History

CHICAGO, Aug. 15 (AP) - John H. Johnson, the pioneering black publisher who founded Ebony and Jet magazines, was remembered on Monday as a man who left "an imprint on the conscience of a nation" at a funeral service that included tributes from Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and former President Bill Clinton.

Mourners filled the 1,500-seat Rockefeller Memorial Chapel at the University of Chicago for the service. Mr. Johnson died on Aug. 8 of heart failure. He was 87.

Mr. Johnson was also eulogized by Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois and Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago.

Mr. Obama said the positive images of blacks that Mr. Johnson published in Ebony and Jet inspired African-Americans to strive to become doctors, lawyers or politicians.

"Only a handful of men and women leave an imprint on the conscience of a nation and on the history that they helped shape," Mr. Obama said. "John Johnson was one of these men."

Mr. Clinton, who helped escort Mr. Johnson's widow to her seat, sought to place the publisher's humble beginnings in the context of the millions of blacks who left the South for northern cities like Chicago during the great migration of the 1900's.

"Out of this swarm of hard-working, family-loving men and women carving out their own version of the American dream, one man stood out because his dream was bigger and he had a vision for how to achieve it," said Mr. Clinton, who awarded Mr. Johnson, a native of Arkansas, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996.

Born into a poor family in Arkansas, Mr. Johnson started his publishing business with a $500 loan that was secured by his mother's furniture and built a publishing and cosmetics enterprise that made him one of the wealthiest and most influential black men in the United States.

Mr. Johnson started Ebony in 1945, at a time when blacks had little political representation and enjoyed relatively scant positive coverage. The magazine's initial circulation of 25,000 a year grew to a monthly circulation of more than 1.6 million last year, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

Jet magazine, a newsweekly founded in 1951, has a circulation of more than 954,000. In addition to Ebony and Jet, Johnson Publishing Company Inc. owns Fashion Fair Cosmetics and JPC Book Division, which publishes books by black authors.

Mr. Johnson is survived by his wife, Eunice, and a daughter, Linda Johnson Rice, the president of Johnson Publishing.