The Johnson Publishing Company

John Johnson launched Ebony Magazine in 1945, a magazine that reached to all segments of the black population, but its readership was mainly middle-class. Most of the stories relating to same sex sexuality in Ebony Magazine focused on Drag Balls, and were mostly laudatory. In March 1948, Ebony wrote of the Drag Balls:

The men who don silks, satins and laces for the yearly masquerades are as style-conscious as the women of a social club planning an annual charity affair or a society dowager selecting a debutante gown for her favorite daughter. Many of the men, some of whom are dress designers by profession, spend months and hundreds of dollars readying wardrobes for the one-night appearances before the public.[1]

Ebony Magazine: "Female Impersonators; Unique Chicago Nightclub Features Make-Believe Ladies as Entertainers" (March 1948)

As the civil rights movement became more popular in the 1950s, a campaign to regulate the sexuality of the working class was launched with the publication in Ebony of an article by Adam Clayton Powell Jr, U.S. Congressman.

Nine months after Powell’s article, Ebony shifted his views on homosexuality with an article on homosexuality on Gladys Bentley. This article, titled “I am woman again,” read that “like a great number of lost souls, she inhabited the half shadow no-man’s land which exists between the boundaries of the two sexes, she was a sad and lonely person and that she had found the love of real man.”

Jet Magazine: Women Who Pass for Men (January 1954)

Jet Magazine: Complete issue from 15 April 1954

Jet Magazine 1954: "Are Homosexuals becoming Respectable?" (April 1954)

Jet Magazine 1954: Photograph of Bayard Rustin (April 1954)

Jet Magazine: "2500 Impersonators Frolic at Annual Ball in New York" (December 1953)

From that moment on, Ebony Magazine and Jet Magazine replaced their articles on the Drag Balls with a "Family" section. John Johnson recalled that his decision to "play down sensationalism and sex" was compelled by the mergence of the new race consciousness. "The world was changing, and people wanted Ebony to be more serious,' he remembered. "They wanted us to more away from the sensationalism that characterized some of our early articles."[2]

Jet Magazine: "Dissatisfied with Sex" (January 1953)

Jet Magazine: "Big Halloween 'Balls' Attract Chicago, Detroit Impersonators" (November 1953)

Jet Magazine: "Jamaican Sex Perversion" (March 1954)

Jet Magazine: "Sex Change of the Week" (April 1954)

Jet Magazine: "Female Impersonators Frolic at Funmakers Ball" (December 1956)

Series of articles about trans African American Charles Brown, published in Jet Magazine during the 1950s:

Male Shake Dancer Plans to Change Sex, Wed GI in Europe (June 1953)

Jail Male Shake Dancer for Posing as Woman in Boston (July 1953)

Leg Technique (July 1953)

Shake Dancer Postpones Sex Change for Face Lifting (August 1953)

Tax Snag Halt's Male Dancer's Trip for Sex Change (October 1953)

Female Impersonator Quits U.S. to Join 'Husband' (December 1956)