Last year we acquired David Hartt's Stray Light, a video which was shot in the Johnson Publishing building, the headquarters of Ebony and Jet magazines, in the days before it was sold in 2011. I normally ignore videos but I watched this one a bunch of times, it's really great. You can watch it on Vimeo here. It's really beautiful.
I was surprised most of the cover photos are all of models - I thought being on the cover of Ebony was a big moment for celebrities. The celebrity photos start in... 1964 maybe?
I'm sure you can find them through the library database at your university.
I don't even have a university anymore.
Online Collection starts in 1959. https://books.google.com/books?id=EsUeOG9n1fYC&pg=PA4&source=gbs_toc&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false
I'm pretty sure they reading about the past is escapism for me. I have about a bookcase's worth of printed history books
I just came by to see if anyone mentioned the light skin-tones on the people on the covers at the link. I don't have any idea of the editorial history of Ebony, but I thought it was interesting.
Ad on page 91 at the link in 6 is a full-page color spread for skin bleaching cream; ad text is indexed for search, amazingly enough, tyhough not the text in the fantastic display typefaces