Eunice Walker Johnson

Eunice Walker was born on the fourth of April 1916 at Selma, Alabama, the daughter of Nathaniel D. Walker — the principal of the Selma University — and Ethel Walker. She was raised in the principal Selma Black middle-class community of the principal Selma University household.

She completed the bachelor's degree at the Talladega College at Talladega, Alabama in 1938 — and the master's degree in social work at Loyola University Chicago in 1941.

She was married on the twenty-first of June 1941 at Selma to John H. Johnson — the founder of the Johnson Publishing Company at Chicago and the principal Black-American magazine publishing entrepreneur of the post-Second-World-War period. They were married from 1941 to her husband's death in 2005.

She was named in 1949 the secretary-treasurer of the Johnson Publishing Company at Chicago — and held the principal Johnson Publishing Company secretary-treasurer position from 1949 to her death in 2010.

She coined in 1951 the principal magazine name Ebony — at the principal naming meeting of the principal Johnson Publishing flagship monthly magazine. She also coined in 1951 the principal magazine name Jet — at the principal launch of the Johnson Publishing weekly news magazine.

She founded the principal Ebony Fashion Fair at Chicago in 1958 — the principal touring Black-American couture fashion show of the principal post-Second-World-War American period. The principal Ebony Fashion Fair toured approximately one hundred and ninety American cities each year across fifty-one years, from 1958 to 2009 — and raised across the period approximately fifty-five million dollars for the principal Black-American charitable organisations of the United Negro College Fund, the National Urban League, and the principal local NAACP chapters.

She acquired across her fifty-one years as Ebony Fashion Fair director and principal buyer the principal Black-American Parisian-and-Roman couture acquisition record of the second half of the twentieth century — at the principal couture houses of Yves Saint Laurent, Christian Dior, Givenchy, Pierre Cardin, Paco Rabanne, Valentino, Emanuel Ungaro, and the principal Parisian-and-Roman couture establishments of the period.

She was the principal first Black-American haute couture client received at the principal Yves Saint Laurent rive gauche atelier at Paris in 1962 — and the principal first Black-American haute couture client received at the principal Christian Dior atelier at the avenue Montaigne at Paris in 1959.

She launched in 1973 the principal Fashion Fair Cosmetics line — the principal Black-American cosmetics line for the principal Black-American skin-tone range — and operated the principal Fashion Fair Cosmetics line from 1973 to 2009.

She died at Chicago on the eighth of January 2010 of complications of renal failure, at ninety-three.

She is honored here as the founder of the Ebony Fashion Fair.