7 minute read
Feature: The essence of Jonathan Blount
The
ESSENCE
of Jonathan Sebastian Blount
By Marianne Eggleston and Jonathan Sebastian Blount
Jonathan Sebastian Blount is celebrating milestones in 2020. He is marking 25 years of life in greater Orlando. He is preparing for his 75th birthday, and he is reflecting on his role in creating and launching “ESSENCE Magazine” 50 years ago.
Blount is one of four men who founded ESSENCE Magazine. The publication was critical in making the whole world see Black women as smart, beautiful and vital to their communities. However, there is much more to ESSENCE than its successful launch.
“I am the originating and conceptual founder of the world’s leading magazine for Black women,” says Blount. However, what many may not know is that I led the team in raising the initial $1 million in financing, without which there would be no ESSENCE Corporation.”
This was the first capital ever raised by an African American on Wall Street, as noted in David L. Goodrich’s 1971 book “Horatio Alger is Alive and Well and Living in America: Success Stories of the Under-30 Generation.”
The Seed Is Planted
Jonathan Sebastian Blount grew up in Monroe, N.C. Under the leadership of his relative Robert Williams, his family was the first African Americans to engage in an armed struggle against the KKK and win. After achieving many other Civil Rights victories in the South, he moved to New Jersey. Following the riots of 1968, which protested Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s death, Pres. Nixon’s administration launched a “Black Capitalism” initiative to put Black people in business.
“They needed to establish a structure to find, inspire, encourage, and fuel Black entrepreneurial ambitions,” Blount recalled.” “I entered one such program at New Jersey Bell Telephone’s Yellow Pages Advertising Division. Thanks to Ed Tarry, a friend I met at Shaw University, I became an executive sales rising star.
But even his star status did not repel discrimination. Blount opened up about his experience and was met with an idea that would change his life forever.
“It was Ed’s mother, Mrs. Claire Tarry, in response to my despair over expressions about racist persecution at the Yellow Pages, who planted the seed in me by asking in late 1968, “Why don’t you start a magazine for Black women?” The idea began to possess me. It led me to talk to every Black woman in earshot, go to fashion shows and hang out in beauty salons,” he said. “I even went to the Business Library on Commerce Street in Newark to read about magazine publishing, management, and finance. At that point, I began to build the financial structure and team that would work closely together with me to launch ESSENCE.”
Giving Birth to a Dream
The pivotal point came when retired NFL player Russ Goings convinced a Wall Street brokerage firm, Shearson Hamill, to launch a sales training program for Black professionals.
“My roommate, Bill Day, entered the program. Like in the film “Trading Places” Russ challenged the Investment Banking Division to start a Minority Enterprise Small Business Investment Corporation (M.E.S.B.I.C.) and invite Blacks to start businesses. He argued that given the opportunity, resources and financing, Blacks could be as successful as the Whites they customarily backed,” Blount said.
“Bill Day invited me to the first of several sessions held at Shearson’s 11 Wall Street offices. In the first session in November 1968, I introduced the concept of ‘A Magazine for Black Women.’ From those sessions, I met the men whom I would organize as the core owners and managers of The Hollingsworth Group (Edward Lewis, Clarence O. Smith and Cecil Hollingsworth).”
Just four days away from the press conference to announce the launch of ESSENCE’s to be held on the following Tuesday. However, we still had not selected a name for the magazine. We were down to seven suggestions and the name Sapphire was at the top of the list.
“Since Sapphire was my idea, my partners left it to me to recommend the final title,” Blount said.
In a weekend meeting with the executive vice president of Branding at Sandgren and Murtha and Maphis Williams and after hours of tough wrangling, we were asked what best described my concept.
“It was then that Maphis and I agreed on ESSENCE,” he said. “That Monday morning, the entire editorial and managing partner teams assembled waiting for me to reveal our recommendation. When I announced ESSENCE, the room fell silent. Then finally, Gordon Parks (co-founder) said, “I like it!” The momentum then began to grow.”
Success Met With Strife
At the company’s first anniversary in May 1971, ESSENCE reached an operating breakeven point at which sales revenue covered all the fixed and variable costs. Blount had personally sold 12 of the 25 pages of advertising that led to the success. It was then, Blount says, the investor directors, led by Bob Guttwillig of “Playboy Magazine,” moved to fire all the original partners.
“They tasted the promise of profitability for the magazine. The group proposed to the editors that since neither of the founding “WHAT MANY MAY NOT KNOW IS THAT I LED THE TEAM IN RAISING
THE INITIAL $1 MILLION IN
partners had publishing experience, they would bring in professional management to support the editorial team. That’s when it was revealed that they would begin dismissing us at the upcoming Board meeting the next day, beginning first with me.” Led by Editor Ida Lewis, five key Editorial Staff members resigned in protest of the dismissal. However, Cecil and I retained our sizable stock positions. Years later, we would combine with other stockholders, a tactic led by Parks and his multimillionaire brother in law, Oscar Tang. We raised the money and bought back controlling interest in the company.
According to Blount, Parks said he had taken the action because, “I thought it was unfair that Hollingsworth and Blount had been booted out. But I am not trying to get even. I like the magazine and I just want to improve it, like a parent wants its child to grow.”
After our stock purchase, management issued stationary storebought stock certificates against a New York Supreme Court T.R.O. [Temporary Restraining Order]. Blount explained, “In a proxy, opposing groups of stockholders persuade other stockholders to allow them to use their shares’ proxy votes. This would launch Black America’s first hostile takeover proxy fight. A hostile takeover can be a difficult and lengthy process as well as exhausting personally and financially and attempts often end up unsuccessful.”
“We eventually gave up the fight to preserve the company. Like a good parent, we, too wanted, our child to grow,” said Blount. “While we were ousted from ESSENCE, as a matter of historical record, we were the first Blacks to aggregate capital formation in capital markets in America. Lessons learned have been many.”
After leaving ESSENCE, Blount launched the magazine “Sapphire,” which would rival ESSENCE for more than two years.
Moving On
Blount remained in New Jersey for a while after leaving ESSENCE, but 25 years ago, when his 5-year-old daughter, Élan, asked him to visit her in Orlando, he relocated for good.
She cried, “Dad, you don’t know how hard it is for a little girl to grow up without (her) father.” Remembering that moment, he said, “I took the first flight from New York the next day and never left her again. No other experience in my entire life was ever more fulfilling than being a father to my beautiful, brilliant, loving daughter, Élan.”
His passion for communications did not cease. In Orlando, Blount helped develop minority media outlets, such as WOKB Radio, “Caribbean American Passport Magazine” and “Ryse Magazine.” He also helped to broker the sale of “ONYX Magazine.”
“As I look back, we not only created an outstanding magazine, we also initiated among the most valuable information, education, affirmational change agents in communications history,” he said.
ESSENCE boasts a print circulation of 1.1 million, a digital monthly individual footprint of 14 million and an annual ESSENCE Festival, which attracts over 600,000 attendees annually.
“Most proudly, in my role as chairman and president of our parent company, I led in raising another million dollars in contributed or deferred payment professional services in the Overground Railroad. We owe our White brothers and sisters a heretofore unheralded debt that I am humbled to acknowledge, respect and publicly honor.”
