John Preston Davis was founding publishers of Our World, a full-size, nationally-distributed magazine edited for African American readers. Its first issue, with singer-actress Lena Horne on the cover, arrived on the nation’s newsstands in April 1946. Our World Magazine was a premier publication for African American men and women covering contemporary topics from black history to sports & entertainment with regular articles on health, fashion, politics & social awareness, was headquartered out of New York City.
Our World portrayed black America as no other national publication had ever done. Its covers featured entertainers’ Lena Horne, Marian Anderson, Harry Belafonte, Eartha Kitt, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Nat King Cole. As black base ball players broke the major league color bar, in the late 1940's, Brooklyn Dodgers baseball players, Jackie Robinson’s and Roy Campaniles faces smiled from Our World’s covers. Important black political figures like New York Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Chicago Congressman William Dawson and United Nations Under Secretary Ralph Johnson Bunche, who won the 1950 Noble Peace Prize, were covered in the magazine.
Eartha Kitt Lena Horne
During 1948, two years after Our World’s first issue reached the nation’s newsstands, the Audit Bureau of Circulation reported its circulation was approaching fifty thousand copies monthly. As circulation increased, advertising revenues rose too.
Major corporations, the Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company, the Calvert and Seagram distilleries, Quaker Oats and Pabst Blue Ribbon Brewery and General Motors were among more than a dozen national corporations placing full-page color advertisements in Our World.
Endorsements by major league baseball players, like New York Giants’ center-fielder Willie Mays, the “Say Hey Kid,” touting Chesterfield cigarettes or any other brand and heavy weight boxing champion Joe Louis speaking up for “Joe Louis Bourbon,” seems strange today in health conscious America, Mays’ smiling face, however, appeared frequently in full-paged, color advertisements for the tobacco company’s products and Joe Louis’s advertisements heartily endorsed the bourbon named after him as the “drink of champions.”
By June 1950 the Carnation and Pet Milk companies, the American Tobacco Company and Schenley Distillers were also Our World
advertisers, along with the Philco and Admiral television corporations. Corporate America was beginning to recognize African Americans’ growing annual $15-million-dollar purchasing power and their increasing disposable income. African Americanworkers were earning four times as much as they earned in 1940, though the median $1,828 annual wage of black men was only 61 percent of the $2,982 annual median income white men earned.
By 1951 Our World magazine had 38 full-time employees working in three stories of a midtown Manhattan office building and one million dollars in revenues, at a time when that was a lot of money.
During the McCarthy Era and the Cold War struggle between East and West, the search for Communists in high places led to accusations against many black intellectuals including John Preston Davis, Ralph Bunche, and Paul Robeson. Davis ‘ international renown did not insulate him from becoming ensnared in U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy's obsession with communists. Davis, whose views on race and class and anti-segregation activities in the thirties were considered radical and "Marxist", was accused of associating with known communists and belonging to communist dominated organizations, such as the National Negro Congress. 395 Americans were interrogated in secret hearings, facing accusations from McCarthy and his staff about their alleged involvement in communist activities
Ralph Bunche was summoned to appear before the International Employees Loyalty Board, Bunche was finally cleared when John P. Davis, testified that Bunche never was a member of the Communist party. John Preston Davis' association with the National Negro Congress was questioned as well. Blacklisted Davis was faced with a life and death struggle of running Our World Magazine which had been a million dollar business in the 1940's and the 1950’s. Rapid decrease in advertising caused Our World Magazine to fold after eleven years of serving the African American Community.
