Clarence O. Smith speaks at the Essence Awards in Los...

Clarence O. Smith speaks at the Essence Awards in Los Angeles on May 31, 2002. Credit: Getty Images/Kevin Winter

Clarence O. Smith, who as one of the founders of Essence magazine helped advertisers realize the potential of the long-ignored market of Black women consumers, has died. He was 92. 

The death, which was on April 21, according to a post on Essence.com, was confirmed on Saturday by Smith’s niece, Kimberly Fonville Boyd. 

Smith, of Yonkers, wasn’t Essence’s only founder. There were also three others: Edward Lewis, Cecil Hollingsworth and Jonathan Blount. But Smith was the magazine's pioneering marketing and business executive who helped run the side that makes mass-market publications profitable.

The magazine debuted in May 1970, a time when big brands largely targeted their ads at white women.

Smith helped change those perceptions via what would become "an institution and a brand name that embodies the hopes and aspirations of African-American women," Newsday reported in 1995, on Essence's 25th anniversary.

"We try to encourage our sisters to develop awareness of the divinity within, to love and embrace themselves so that they can push back boundaries — real or perceived — and expand the promise of their lives," then-Essence editor in chief Susan Taylor told Newsday in 1995.

In a post on Essence.com last month, Taylor credited Smith with helping catalyze what Essence would become.

"He shifted hearts, minds — and investment choices — in the conventional advertising world," Taylor wrote. "With the income he and his teams primarily generated, we editors were able to grow the magazine’s beauty and depth."

The ads in Essence were part of a wave of progress in advertising starting in the 1960s, dovetailing with the Civil Rights Movement and offering a contrast from those that included Black people just as "stereotypes and caricatures," according to a post by the Association of National Advertisers' Educational Foundation.

Essence was one of the first Black magazines to cover controversial subjects such as women with HIV, domestic violence, prison and South African apartheid, Newsday reported in 1995. 

Smith was at Essence Communications for over three decades, serving as president and helping persuade mainstream advertisers to market to Black women and shift "the advertising world’s attention, moving investment toward Black audiences with a new level of respect and understanding," the magazine wrote in its post last month.

Time Inc. bought Essence Communications in the early 2000s — Smith opposed the sale — and sold it in 2018, according to Variety.

Smith is survived by his wife, Elaine. His sons, Clarence Jr. and Craig, died before him, according to a family obituary.

He was born in the Bronx and went to City College, and his first professional job was as a freight forwarder for a customs agency, according to the 1999 book "Black Enterprise Titans of the B.E. 100s: Black CEOs Who Redefined and Conquered American Business."

In an interview in 2005 with National Public Radio, Smith recalled his childhood in a mostly Black neighborhood in the northeast Bronx.

"We were raised by men and women who gave us values and got us to understand that we had a responsibility to grow up to be with people who made a productive life and who looked after the larger community," he said.

According to the book, he recalled pounding the pavement in the months before Essence's debut to persuade advertisers to place ads in the nascent publication. Estée Lauder, Chanel, Revlon — none of them had ever tried an appeal to Black women.

"We thought that the world was waiting for this idea ...," he was quoted as saying. "We had no idea how difficult it would be."

The proportion of drivers who refused to take a test after being pulled over by trained officers doubled over five years. NewsdayTV’s Virginia Huie reports.  Credit: Newsday/Steve Pfost, John Paraskevas, Kendall Rodriguez; Morgan Campbell; Photo credit: Erika Woods; Mitchell family; AP/Mark Lennihan, Hans Pennink; New York Drug Enforcement Task Force; Audrey C. Tiernan; Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office

'Just disappointing and ... sad' The proportion of drivers who refused to take a test after being pulled over by trained officers doubled over five years. NewsdayTV's Virginia Huie reports. 

The proportion of drivers who refused to take a test after being pulled over by trained officers doubled over five years. NewsdayTV’s Virginia Huie reports.  Credit: Newsday/Steve Pfost, John Paraskevas, Kendall Rodriguez; Morgan Campbell; Photo credit: Erika Woods; Mitchell family; AP/Mark Lennihan, Hans Pennink; New York Drug Enforcement Task Force; Audrey C. Tiernan; Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office

'Just disappointing and ... sad' The proportion of drivers who refused to take a test after being pulled over by trained officers doubled over five years. NewsdayTV's Virginia Huie reports. 

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