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14 flagships · 25 briefs · 8 dossiers · 765 entities — record updated October 3, 2026

Johnson Publishing Company bankruptcy and archive auction

CTL-E-0819 · Event · other · unspecified

Verified evidence grade of this record

(2019-04 to 2019-07) Chapter 7 bankruptcy (April 2019) and the July 25, 2019 auction at which a four-foundation consortium bought the Ebony/Jet archive for just under $30M, forestalling private dispersal.

Notes

Merged into canonical KG 2026-10-03 from PRESERVE-001; source entity IDs: CTL-DR-PRESERVE-001:CTL-PRESERVE-E-077; source research type(s): event. Era not present in source research record(s); marked unspecified pending human review.

Sources

Record CTL-E-0819 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · evidence grade: Verified · CTL research: PRESERVE-001.
Directory: all entity records · the knowledge graph

Cite as: CultureTechLens, “Johnson Publishing Company bankruptcy and archive auction (CTL-E-0819),” October 4, 2026. https://culturetechlens.com/graph/entities/ctl-e-0819/

From the Archive

The archive in pictures

The Black press and the hands that kept the record. Photographs from the CultureTechLens research record — rights-cleared, credited, and cited like everything else here.

Ida B. Wells — portrait from ‘Women of Distinction’ (1893)
Ida B. Wells — portrait from ‘Women of Distinction’ (1893)Photo: Public Domain (from ‘Women of Distinction,’ 1893), via Wikimedia Commons
Door of the historic Chicago Defender Building, Chicago
Door of the historic Chicago Defender Building, ChicagoPhoto: TonyTheTiger, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Press room of the Richmond Planet newspaper, 1899
Press room of the Richmond Planet newspaper, 1899Photo: Library of Congress, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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