EBONY has documented Black life for more than 80 years, and it is again owned by a Black family. This week it added an honor named for the man who made that possible: the Junior Bridgeman Business Vanguard, the first business category in its Power 100.
Ulysses “Junior” Bridgeman was a former NBA player who built a business career in restaurant franchises, a Coca-Cola bottling operation and a 10% stake in the Milwaukee Bucks. After the magazine and its sister title JET ran into financial trouble, his family acquired both. His daughter, Eden Bridgeman Sklenar, is now EBONY’s CEO.
The category’s inaugural honorees are Latriece Watkins, president and CEO of Sam’s Club U.S.; Tope Awotona, founder and CEO of Calendly; Stacy Brown-Philpot, founder and managing partner of Cherryrock Capital; and Byron Allen. The Power 100 gala was set for Monday at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles under the theme “The Stories We Shape.” Alicia Keys, Jay-Z, Naomi Osaka and Keke Palmer are among this year’s honorees.
Bridgeman Sklenar has tied the award to a point about money. “Without access to capital, you can’t create the art,” she told Black Enterprise. “You can’t do a lot of the community work.” She has described the goal of the list as ensuring that “Black people remain at the center of telling our stories and defining our collective future.”
The stake is ownership. Black publications were once the places where Black communities saw themselves in print, and many were sold, shrunk or shut when the money moved elsewhere. EBONY survived because a Black businessman with his own capital was willing to buy it and his daughter was willing to run it. That is not a model every outlet can copy, and it should not have to depend on a billionaire’s family.
It is also a reminder of what the honorees represent: Black executives and founders running companies at a scale that still draws notice because it remains rare. Naming a business prize after a man who turned franchise restaurants into a fortune, then spent it on Black media, puts that fact in front of readers who are mostly shown entertainers.
EBONY is now working toward its centennial. The test of this chapter is whether the capital behind it can fund Black storytelling beyond the magazine’s own pages.
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