By OSWALD T. BROWN
WASHINGTON, D.C., December 10, 2023 — As a Black journalist, who was an avid subscriber to both Ebony and Jet Magazines, I absolutely had to share this African American History post on Facebook on with readers of my online publication, BAHAMAS CHRONICLE, which has a huge following among the Bahamian diaspora across the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.
“Herbert Nipson was born in 1916 in Asheville, N.C, and grew up in Clearfield, Pa. He graduated in 1940 from Penn State, where he had majored in journalism. The first known colored Penn State Collegian newspaper reporter (1936), Nipson would be selected assistant sports editor in 1939 and join the paper’s Managing Board.
He also lettered on the cross-country track team, and participated on the wrestling squad. Nipson became the first colored student in the nation elected to Sigma Delta Chi in 1939, the national journalism honor society (now known as The Society of Professional Journalists). Because Penn State did not note Nipson’s race on the nomination, Sigma Delta Chi did not realize they had a colored member until 1946. In 1949 he was hired as associate editor of Ebony magazine, and was promoted to executive editor in 1972.
When Herbert Nipson joined Ebony magazine’s editorial staff in 1949, the publication, founded just four years earlier in Chicago, had a target readership of urban African Americans, and its stories reflected that sensibility.
But as the civil rights movement surged to the forefront of American consciousness, Nipson helped push the magazine to a broader audience, covering issues important to rural African Americans and branching out into sports, entertainment and the arts.
By the time he retired in 1987, after 15 years as executive editor, the magazine enjoyed national recognition and mainstream appeal for both its issue-oriented reporting and its cultural coverage.
Nipson received the Washington, D.C. Capitol Press Club’s outstanding journalist award in 1965, and after 38 years and 456 issues of Ebony, retired in 1987. Nipson died on December 10, 2011, at the age of 95.
