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In its 40th year of publication, Ebony magazine reached a circulation of 2.3 million and its companion jet magazine reached a circulation of 700,000.

Ebony, powdered After Life and Look magazines, was one of the first to feature content by and for African-Americans.

Ebony and jet magazines were a staple in African-American homes, beauty and barbershops around the country.

Tonight, we talk about the legacy of these magazines with the retired West Coast editor of Ebony and jet magazine.

I'm so happy you're joining us and.

From Los Angeles, this is KLCS PBS.

Welcome to Everybody with Angela Williamson, an innovation, Arts, education and public affairs program.

Everybody with Angela Williamson is made possible by viewers like you.

Thank you.

And now your host, doctor Angela Williamson.

Elder Collier is our guest.

Elder, thank you so much for being here.

You're quite welcome.

I'm happy to be here.

Well, I mean, we are going to talk about why you were here, but before we talk about why you were here, I want our audience to get to know who elder is.

So tell us a little bit about why you ended up or how you ended up getting into writing and the journey that led you to write for Ebony and jet magazines?

Well, I'm from Memphis.

I think I might have mentioned it to you earlier, and I think I started writing.

I was looking back in some old letters my sister found, I had a little newspaper going on in fourth grade.

So I started writing early, and I don't know what made led me to do it, but just I love writing and, I got into reading the same way.

I'll be more competitive.

My sister was very smart and my cousin was very smart.

I was younger than the two of them.

So to keep up with them, I started reading so I could talk to them.

You know, say, what are you talking about?

Now, I know they're talking about because I can keep up with them.

And, so I did, and I was the yearbook editor and school photographer in high school, and at Northwestern University, where I went as an undergraduate and graduate student, at the political science major with minors in history.

And I think that a lot class in Russian literature, which I loved.

Yeah, it may not have been the most marketable, but I love Russian lit.

Wow.

Did with it.

But when you write, you need to understand a lot of the world around you.

So do you think that was important?

I realize now, okay, but back then, it's just about fun.

Oh, and when I was a senior, I said, you know what?

As a political science major, I don't want to go to law school.

Yes, it was about 80%.

Do.

Yes.

I'm not going to be a lawyer.

So I said, I'm going to go to graduate school and keep writing.

So journalism would be a natural way to go.

And I stayed at northwestern for graduate school, and my first job was not done in Florida yet.

Florida.

Clearwater, Florida.

So you you start in Memphis.

You born in Memphis?

Yeah.

Born in Memphis.

So, yeah.

Of course.

Then, yeah.

I guess you kind of started there.

Then you end up at Northwestern in Illinois, then you get down to Florida.

Yeah, my first job was in Florida, and the second job was in back in Memphis.

I covered the school board in Memphis as a reporter for the daily called the press Amateur, and that was there for maybe, just under two years.

But I want to be back in Chicago.

I mean, that's my that's my city.

I love being there.

A lot of my friends are still in Chicago, so I kept going over on a weekend.

I mean, found a job in Chicago.

And one of my colleagues that I had gone to Ebony from, the paper in Memphis.

So he said, we got an opening up here at Ebony and jet.

I'm like, I'm there.

So.

Oh, and so I went to Chicago.

I started writing at Ebony and jet, from Memphis and I want to stay in Chicago.

But after a year and a half, I was moved to LA.

And so I started covering things for Ebony and jet.

luckily it wasn't just hardware stores.

I got to cover the Olympics in 84.

Yes.

Got to interview like Tom Bradley, who was mayor then?

Evelyn Ashford, great track star.

Yes.

Flo.

Florence Griffith, Flo Jo, if we called her.

We all a lot of the African-American community knows about Ebony and jet magazines.

Do you have those as a staple in your home as well, or.

Are you kidding?

Yeah, I know stacks of them.

So I mean, did you ever imagine that, you.

Know, people really, I didn't know.

Were you thinking about that when you saw those magazine in the house?

In the barbershop?

Yeah.

And I talked about that.

Or like I said, the beauty in barbershop.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah, I was in a barber shop and the grocery store, but also my grandmother's house, my mom's house, my mom's cousin's house, stacks of ebony and jet there.

But I, you know, they were fun to look at.

Beautiful covers.

Always.

I gave it no thought.

I gave it no thought.

I never saw myself working there.

When you took the job at Ebony magazine, did you think that you would have this long career there?

Not at all.

I don't think anybody did.

I mean, some people might have, but I think because I don't, you know, we've I see ourselves as gypsies in many ways.

Reporters.

You want to go from one to the other.

You want to change?

you know, the platforms, etc..

So I was in Florida, then Memphis, and I got up to evidence that, a lot of people fled as a destination because it's the biggest publication, you know, in the world at that time.

Yes.

They had like 10 million readers, which is, you know, bigger than most white publications.

but I just I guess I didn't know what I was doing.

I was still I still like, what, 24.

Yes.

25.

So I was just meandering.

But I did like being there.

I like that one of them.

Once I got there, I, you know, this is almost, you know, sitting in a part of history in a sense you are.

They gave tours of the building hit rare African art all over the building.

oh yes, they had Ebony Fashion Fair was a big, product.

It's a long division in the building.

And I realized how, you know, just sitting in a part of history.

So I realized, you know, I'm here.

You're you're here.

And so you get there.

And what is the first major story that they have?

You cover?

I got to interview right away.

Brook Benton.

You know, it's like he's saying Rainy Night in Georgia has its biggest hit.

He did duets with Dinah Washington, and they say he's on the phone away for me.

Yeah, I know.

This is like, in part because I had the call and you say hello.

Oh, yeah.

Like at home.

Really?

What do I say to him?

Because I had done very few when I was a newspaper reporter.

Yes.

Very few.

I done, like Gary Coleman, the little.

Yeah.

He came through Memphis.

and not so I did, I can't recall, but more people have news that I did.

I gave an ex, former British prime minister and did him.

He was in Memphis.

I was just surprised, I guess, because I'm a native of Memphis, why so many people from around the world just flocked there to go to Graceland.

And for us, it's no big deal because we live there.

Yeah, and no attraction to me.

And so.

But it sucked a lot of, black legends.

And you know what?

It really got me.

I'm like, I'm almost pinch myself.

Angela Davis.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, yeah, she was there meeting with the owner and said, come quickly, you gotta talk to Andrew Davis.

I'm like, oh God.

I stopped for a second.

so so now you realize that, you know, you you didn't know you would be at Ebony and jet so long, but you're walking in and you're interviewing these numbers of, like, musical legends and activists and and so where does outdoor go next?

This all of a sudden you get into the office and they say, we're going to reopen the division.

You're going, did you really want to go to the West Coast?

Not at all.

As opposed to say that what?

Well, I like Los Angeles, you know.

Yes.

I've been out here at least three times before I moved out here to do interviews.

And that's what they're saying.

You know, we spend too much money flying people out there.

Yes.

We have an office that has to be reopened.

So I like LA, not like Los Angeles, but I didn't I didn't want to move because I was already happy where I was.

And what three interviews did they fly you out here for?

Do you remember?

Let's see, I know Ray Parker, junior.

He just done the song.

Ghostbusters.

Yeah, yeah, I, I I'm thinking that in my head.

I flew out to do a piece on him, and Kim Fields is on, What?

Facts of life.

Yes.

And there's a piece.

I had to come out to LA.

I had to go to Oakland for this piece on, James Dolan.

Well, who is a black service member who have had, you know, us try to use, LSD on him back in the early 60s.

You may not be aware of him.

He.

I know the piece on 60 minutes on him.

How they use LSD on him.

Well, he's not a black person, you know, perceptions and all of that.

he had no idea of what was going on in his body and his mind.

And so I came out to do a big piece on him.

And that was really rewarding.

Yes.

Because that's, good, a mix up between celebrity and, you know, human interest stories like that.

So I got to mix them up like that.

And he was an amazing person to talk to.

And, before we in this segment, that's actually one of my final questions before we come back and talk about this, the three major stories that you feel that changed, the African-American life and us as a whole, a society.

But, and if you had to choose one story that you came in to write and you went in with one perception and came out with another perception or something, you learn new at what one story just surprised you after you did the interview or after you wrote it?

I don't want to say the one.

Well, was one of them James doing well?

another had to be when I interviewed Ray Charles on the piano with him and he was playing me, I had a wonderful time in sang along with him, and I can't even say.

Okay, you're singing with Ray Charles.

He has songs that, you know, like an early song, country songs to hear that I knew I'm not a country music person at all, but.

From Memphis, you probably heard them, right?

Well, I'm not.

Memphis is more R&B and blues.

Blues.

That is Nashville, man.

Oh, sorry.

I'm sorry to hear that whole.

Yeah.

Bad.

Oh, 200 miles away.

Yeah, I know.

But yeah, but that was really, And now I was like, also stunned at how rewarding it was and about things in his life he hadn't sometimes talked about before.

So that was really, you know, an amazing interview to have him, you know, give to me.

So that was wonderful.

That is actually a wonderful way to end our segment.

Okay.

And when we come back, you know, we'll talk about.

Yes.

Great.

Yes I do.

Come back to hear more from Albert.

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Welcome back.

That was a great first segment.

We got to know a little bit about you and your journey.

what we wanted to spend this time talking about would be, in your opinion, the three greatest stories that you covered, that change, like African American life as we know it, even as a society.

Looking back at those stories and the first one, I think we talked about, we wanted to talk about would be the LA riots.

Yeah.

What a surreal time.

I mean, I mean, how how did you know to go out to this location?

How did it start?

I mean, did you get a phone call or were you already watching the news.

phone call?

I don't think it was once that, verdict came down, everybody kept them afloat and normally.

But downtown was already burning up.

People were, overlooking that.

So they had fires everywhere.

I think the perception was like with the Watts riots, it was confined to one area.

Yes.

This caught everybody off guard, especially white people.

They are going to be down in South LA where black people and Latinos live.

Yes.

But you had fires in Venice.

You had the Beverly Center bullets ricocheting through the Beverly Center, things in Pomona, Venice.

It was it was widespread.

And I think that might have frightened more people than anything else, because a lot of like in Detroit in the 60s, same thing in L.A., the white rise confined to black areas.

But this time it was all over LA, all over.

And again, it made it so surreal, especially that because I had my photographer with me, we like we sitting here the whole time seeing people walking out stuff with couches and carrying couches or chairs on top of cars I found like racks of furs, you know.

Oh, some bullocks will sit down on wheels.

You know, the Wilson I just bullocks BW yes.

Wilshire.

Yes.

You see all of this going on and we're shooting.

I'm interviewing people.

I saw this, ambulance with the firemen and sitting on the corner of Pico, and I think Fairfax, he just sitting in there and my women, they think they're burning all around you.

What are you going to do?

He said nothing.

He said that there's no police protection.

So I can't go and do this without, you know, protection because it's too dangerous.

It's.

I can put my life at risk.

And so you're letting all this burn.

So.

But when I think about covering L.A. riots, one thing that stands out most in my mind makes me the angriest of all is that watching the way the dominant press covered the riots.

Yeah, they kept showing black people in brown people over and over and over.

Yet up in Hollywood, all the looters were white.

they were all white.

But I didn't see cameras around shooting them.

We had stores back there called silo was like a big, like Federated, almost silo stores and electronics there.

Yes.

They would come out into the parking lot opening boxes with, you know, stereos and things and everybody.

We saw it with white nobles shooting these white people except us.

And I'd find it upsetting that, you know, two of my friends from school, they had the flu.

And for this they told Go to South LA and covet a story.

I didn't know if it was.

They had no idea of where South L.A. was.

And I recall driving down Vermont and seeing a television crew.

Vermont in third, near the Ralphs and Vons.

In.

Koreatown.

She's singing here live in South Central LA, and this is now South Central L.A. they come in, they don't know where they are.

They do a disservice to their station, their viewers, and to us who live in LA.

And that really bugged me.

And the only person I saw on television saying, you know, it's involving everybody with and Martin, who was an anchor of the, channel seven news, she kept saying everybody's involved.

It's not any one group.

It's everybody doing this.

The looting and the starting fires.

Yet all the crews are down South LA, so they're missing.

Well, the white people were.

And again, it just really burned me up to see, you know, the disparity.

But you know it's went on for three days.

It was very it was surreal.

And you know, after the first day they said stop for a minute because Jesse Jackson got to come to town.

You got to go and pick up Jesse and talk to him, pick him up.

They said, we're not going to be a limousine because, he was doing Nightline with Ted Koppel, and they said, you're going to ride with him from the airport to the ABC studios in Hollywood.

And so what was so funny?

I'm at the airport picking up Jesse Jackson as he's coming out the airport.

Everybody's applauding all these five folks who probably hate him otherwise.

Thank you, Mr. Jackson.

Thank you, Reverend, that thank you for helping us.

God help us.

They were just so nervous and so glad to have somebody because, you know, people were shooting at airplanes to remember.

Yes.

Yeah.

It was totally surreal.

And we got to the ABC studios.

We picked up Tom Brady, the mayor.

So I'm in the limousine with all these people.

Jesse Jackson, Tom Bradley and Maxine Waters came in to.

So with me talking to all of them at the same time.

Because, I mean, you have some heavy hitters in this limousine.

I mean, and you're a reporter.

Yeah, it's just me.

I was a reporter there.

That's me.

Do you have a question for them, or are you just listening to them talk?

I mean, what is your role as a reporter, listening to these three most powerful people like in LA in the country, talk about what's going on right around them as you're driving the streets of Los Angeles.

I was I first I, you know, I got to listen, let me say something that, you know, can follow up on.

So, Jesse Jackson did most of the talking in the beginning, because we got him first, then we to go and get City Hall with the mayor.

But Jesse did, the thing with channel with Ted Koppel.

But on the way there, he's saying, you know, we got to get this.

You got to do this.

You know, we got to make sure we show what's going on in the city.

And it's not just black.

You hear it, you know, before I said it, same thing.

It's not just a black thing.

Maxine Waters saying, echoing some of the same sentiments.

Now, what can we do about this?

How can we stop this?

You know, we're not spending, you know, taxpayers money for this.

I said yes, since they've all done.

The thing is, they all surprise.

Really?

That's interest.

And nobody can see this coming.

No.

And Tom Bradley, I think what the most shocked of all, because he knew he might get a lot of the, flak for his fighting with Daryl Gates with the police chief.

people blame both of them, you know, 5050 for letting this happen because they've been feuding.

And if you were run LA, then they've been feuding for many years.

The two of them hate each other publicly.

And so they felt they let this happen.

So I think in the limousine he saw what was going to come.

He could look at the crystal ball the next few weeks or whatever this is going to, you know, I'm going to be screwed.

Yeah.

Wow.

Okay.

That was that was really great story.

That was the first one.

So where where is outdoor when the verdict comes down for O.J.

Simpson?

Are you there through the entire trial, every every part from the time he's arrested to trial to when the verdict is right?

Even before the trial, he was arrested.

I happened to be in Chicago, and I got a call because I was on vacation.

I'm getting the call, and they said, you got to come back to LA for what they said.

O.J.

Simpson's wife has been killed.

And people's wives, husbands get kill all the time.

This is his ex-wife.

They weren't married.

He wasn't.

You know, I didn't understand the urgency.

And when I got back to LA, I'm like, okay, let's see what's going on.

And then the police department was so cooperative for the first time ever, they were saying, we want you to see these pictures from the crime scene.

Crime scene, you know, not other reporters.

And they were not just in by.

Wait a minute.

This is kind of weird to.

They are so cooperative.

I'm like, I don't want I want to see all these body picture.

But I said, well, we you have the right to come and check them out.

You know, this is your schedule time.

You know, they had a lot of time for all of us reporters to come and look at these pictures from the crime scene, which seems weird to me because they never would that cooperative with reporters.

and then the Bronco chase will just go there.

Surreal to turn himself in.

And the crowds and every overpass from here to almost Mexico cheering him on.

So that was kind of strange to.

But I covered the whole trial from the beginning to the end.

And that was like, I'm like, I'm so sick of this.

I'm like, I well, you know, what thing is?

A lot of reporters.

It was a long journey for for everything from the beginning to the end.

It was a long journey.

But what annoyed me was there's so many reported the mind's made up now.

I want to.

You know I don't care.

I know this is a job.

Yes.

If he's guilty, five innocent.

Fine.

I'm just doing my job as a reporter because I'm one of the few people who really does not care.

He's okay.

I mean, I liked his football career, but I was on it.

I didn't idolize him by any stretch.

And so people I talked my mother back in Memphis, you know, she said, well, you know, it was a different kind of hit, you know, the mob head or, you know, Goldman was a target, not Nicole.

And like, that's made it so funny.

Everybody had these theories about what was going on, who you know, the targeting, all of that.

And and I'd interviewed Johnnie Cochran twice before he got the O.J.

case.

he was doing he was representing Jim Brown in a potential rape case, and I interviewed him a lot.

Then.

so I had I had a good rapport with him.

But the the worst part to me was, when the verdict came down, okay?

I was just stunned and angry.

Not too much about him getting off, but out of the clear blue, we're getting phone calls from white people saying, you know, you black people can't do this by people.

You know, I'm like, what are you talking about?

They wanted to vent because O.J.

was exonerated.

So yes, I mean, white people wanted to say something.

And, you know, Ebony was black, so it was, well, you know, launch at them.

And there were just really I'm like, they said, blasting.

I'd be on juries and all of that.

They don't have the intelligence to do that.

I was getting all of this.

All of this was coming on the telephone.

You know, I went to a restaurant.

People started ranting and raving.

Then when I walked in, you know, more black people, you know, just by being in what I perceived like Alabama back in the 50s.

This is LA in the 90s.

Well, not this LA.

I don't think it's the whole country.

Whole country was.

The whole country was like that because you had black people cheering.

But a lot of the ones I talked after, they said we were cheering Janet Cochran, not OJ Simpson.

We thought Johnny did a masterful job, but we are so proud of him.

And also something that would glad gladly listen.

White men get off all the time.

Like Robert Blake who played Baretta on TV.

He got off cloth.

Von Bulow got off calling his wife sunny earlier.

They black people thinking, I mean, I don't if they really did or not.

I can't say that they were guilty, but they were both exonerated and OJ was as well.

So they, you know, it was it's I was just really stunned at the racism I was getting.

And you were just doing your job.

You know, it was over.

But I'm saying I'm walking around LA and still hearing all these things.

And I thought to some of the jurors, because people were saying to me, well, you know, that black people can't process complex information and things like that.

And they say those white women were intimidated to vote along with the black jurors and to the jury said to me, no.

When I walked in at the very beginning of the trial and took a straw vote, and both white women felt, you know, exonerate him.

So what about any pressure?

People make these, you know, these that they made leaps all the time.

And I think it just it's just unfortunate.

And again, the other surprising part was how many reporters were angry about him getting off.

And I'm like, why do you care?

That's my idea.

What do you care?

But I was hearing white people, reporters, journalists who should have been a little bit more objective, just angry.

And they were venting as well about O.J.

getting off.

And I'm like, is it that big a deal, people?

They said, no, they thought it.

And this is a black savage getting off killing a beautiful white, blond, blue white woman.

So it goes back to almost in some people perception, Mandingo and slavery days, you know, keep them where he's a little with white one in the first place.

She's white, blond and all of that.

And that's what got me.

This is the way I was seeing people I thought I'd respected in the business, you know, so angry somebody black got off with this and they say, why are you upset?

Because I didn't care.

They won and I don't care.

Now, you know I'm guilty of innocent.

You know my job is over now.

I'm gonna do a big piece on this, and I'm going to be done.

And the jurors I talked to glad to talk afterwards because they could afterwards.

And what stuck with me again, with the way so many people, especially white people in this country, was so hostile and angry.

So it was a big so it wasn't it's an L.A. story, as you know.

Now.

They were just really going off the.

Deep back story.

It was international.

Oh yeah.

And why were they, you know, I just couldn't say why they cared so much.

They see the reporters for their doing.

Their job is probably more detached when you're a reporter and discovered objectively.

And it was so clear that they couldn't to me.

So that was a that was a stunning quite stunning.

Well and I, I like how you're giving us a different view because a lot of times when we're, we miss you know, a different view because we're just watching what's on the news or reading it.

So you're able to give us that, that perspective out.

Or thank you so much for the time and sharing those two stories, because they're so important not only to everything that is, what we call the African-American experience, but just everybody in the United States experience, but also to what we had in Los Angeles.

So I appreciate you spending some time with me.

And.

My pleasure.

And thank you for joining us on everybody with Angela Williamson.

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