Founded in 1946 as Negro Achievements by Horace J. Blackwell, an African-American clothing merchant of Fort Worth, Texas, who also had already founded The World’s Messenger in 1942, featuring romance-true confession type stories of working-class blacks, Sepia is a photojournalistic magazine that featured articles based primarily on achievements of African Americans. It was part of the rise of postwar publications and businesses aimed at black audiences. George Levitan, a Jewish-American man born in Michigan, who was a plumbing merchant in Fort Worth, bought the magazines and Good Publishing Company (aka Sepia Publishing) in 1950. He changed the magazine’s name gradually; in 1954 he named it Sepia, and published it until his death in 1976. He changed the name of Messenger to Bronze Thrills and had success with that for some time as well, also publishing black-audience magazines Hep and Jive.

Cover Gif Artwork by Mic