New Ebony Editor-in-Chief Kierna Mayo oversaw the August issue of Ebony Magazine which has the provocative cover line “America Loves Black People,” but on the cover, “people” is overlaid by “culture.” The idea is that Black culture with all of its perceived “attitude” and “cool” is actually what’s beloved by America, not the human beings that create it. The issue plays off that them, revisiting Ferguson and the Emmit Till murder that have devastated the Black community.
“It’s just a suggestion for Black people to ponder about – do they love Black people or Black culture. We just start the conversation and quite frankly, the timing couldn’t be any better,” says Mayo. “We went to Ferguson and talked about how Black people’s lives there have changed as all of our lives have changed in the last year. We’ve been dealing with domestic terrorism for far too long.”
Mayo says that there was an internal debate about whether or not the cover made sense for Ebony magazine, particularly as this is the annual ‘Money, Power, Respect’ issue.
“The first thing that drove us was coming back to our roots,” says Mayo. “Recognizing that this is what Ebony has been in a long tradition of doing. We mean to be provocative and we mean to really challenge the community to begin to think about these larger issues and to find out what your place is and where’s your role in the solution-finding.”
