MONDAY, FEBRUARY 1: BLACK HISTORY MONTH

Profile America for the first day of Black History Month. February is a time to recall and honor the many positive contributions to our nation made by the people of African descent. Started as a special week 84 years ago by historian Carter G. Woodson, the observance is now a full month of activities across the country. There are just over 41 million African-Americans in the U.S., 13½ percent of the total population. They are the largest minority group in 24 states. New York has the largest number of blacks at 3.5 million, and 17 other states are home to al least 1 million. The state with the highest percentage of African-Americans among its population is Mississippi at 38 percent. This special edition of Profile America is a public service of the U.S. Census Bureau, conducting the 2010 Census beginning April 1st.

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, Facts for Features, CB10-FF.01

Profile America is produced by the Public Information Office of the U.S. Census Bureau. These daily features are available as produced segments, ready to air, on a monthly CD or on the Internet at http://www.census.gov (look under the "Newsroom" button).

SOURCE U.S. Census Bureau

The widow of Johnson Publishing Co. founder John H. Johnson, Mrs. Johnson, 93, died of renal failure Sunday, Jan. 3, in her Chicago home, according to a company spokeswoman.

A close business partner of her husband’s since the beginning of Johnson Publishing in 1942, Mrs. Johnson remained the company’s secretary-treasurer at the time of her death and for years wrote a monthly fashion feature for Ebony magazine.

Johnson Publishing’s flagship, conceived as an African-American version of Life magazine and published since 1945, was named by Mrs. Johnson to reflect the mystique of fine black ebony wood, said Wendy Parks of Johnson Publishing.

But Mrs. Johnson’s greatest legacy may be her role as producer and director of the Ebony Fashion Fair, an influential event that for decades has been a showcase for the world’s top designers.

The fair was started in the 1950s as a fundraiser for a hospital in New Orleans at the suggestion of Jessie Covington Dent, wife of a former Dillard University president.

It was a success, and Mrs. Johnson and her husband decided to take the concept on the road. Produced annually since 1958, the fair became a traveling fashion extravaganza that now makes nearly 180 stops a year in the U.S. and abroad to largely black audiences from across economic strata.

“It brought to the lower-middle-class black people a sense of what fashion really was. She gave the local community a chance to see these clothes,” said Andre Leon Talley, editor at large for Vogue magazine.

The fair was both “an aspirational as well as an inspirational experience,” Talley said. It became a showcase for a new generation of black designers as well as early African-American models.

The show’s director and producer since 1961, Mrs. Johnson was initially a curiosity as she toured French and Italian boutiques and fashion houses. But her sense of elegance, and her deep pocketbook, quickly made her a respected figure in the world of high fashion.

“When they found out how much money I was going to spend, word got around,” Mrs. Johnson said in 1997.

She stayed at the best hotels, dined at the finest restaurants and dressed impeccably.

“She always had on the last word [in fashion], but it was always very elegant,” Talley said. Legendary French designer Yves Saint Laurent “would receive her in the same manner he’d receive the editor of Vogue.”

Since its founding, the Ebony Fashion Fair has produced more than 4,000 shows and raised more than $55 million for charity, according to Johnson Publishing.

Mrs. Johnson was born Eunice Walker and grew up in Selma, Ala. Her father was a doctor, and her mother was a high school principal and a teacher at Selma University, which had been co-founded by Mrs. Johnson’s maternal grandfather.

At Talladega College in Alabama, she received a bachelor’s degree in sociology. She later studied journalism at Northwestern University and interior design at the former Ray-Vogue School of Design.

She met John H. Johnson in 1940 at a dance hall called Bacon’s Casino in Chicago. The couple were married in Selma in 1941 and returned to Chicago, where she worked by his side as he started a publishing company with $500 borrowed against his mother’s furniture.

John Johnson died in 2005. Johnson Publishing is now run by the Johnsons’ daughter, Linda Johnson Rice.

Mrs. Johnson is also survived by a granddaughter.

Services will be private.

The team that discovered the fossil, called Ardipithicus ramidus, say it's the closest thing yet found to the common ancestor of both chimps and humans. That common ancestor is thought to have lived about 6 million years ago. From that animal, chimps and other apes evolved in one direction, while our own ancestors, the hominids, evolved through several forms into what we are now.

The anthropologists found the bones in Ethiopia, in a desert region called Aramis. Scientists have previously discovered a few teeth and bones of Ardipithicus, dating from 5 to 6 million years ago. But in this case, they have more than 100 bones from 36 individuals, including a partial skeleton of a female whom they've dubbed "Ardi."