Gillespie, Marcia Ann

Impact on the world

Hired as Essence’s managing editor in 1970 through a connection to the magazine’s founding editorial director, photographer Gordon Parks, Gillespie was promoted to editor-in-chief the following year after submitting an unsolicited written vision for the struggling young publication, and over the next decade built it into one of the fastest-growing women’s magazines in the country, winning a National Magazine Award and stabilizing the company through a period when three prior editors had already departed. She left Essence in 1980 to teach in Jamaica, returned to journalism as a Ms. magazine contributing editor that same year, and rose to executive editor and then, in 1993, editor-in-chief of Ms., broadening its readership before co-founding Liberty Media for Women with Gloria Steinem to purchase the financially troubled magazine in 1998 and relaunch it in 1999; she negotiated its transfer to the Feminist Majority Foundation in 2001. Essence’s longtime later editor Susan L. Taylor, also profiled in this collection, credited Gillespie’s early encouragement — “if you can speak you can write” — as pivotal to her own development as a writer.

Life & background

Born July 10, 1944, in Rockville Centre, New York, to a church sexton father and a domestic-worker mother who ran a small catering business, Gillespie graduated with honors in American studies from Lake Forest College in 1966 and worked as a Time-Life Books researcher before joining Essence in 1970. She led Essence from 1971 to 1980 and Ms. magazine from 1993 to 2001, has since co-authored an authorized biography of Maya Angelou, and continues to teach media and communications as a visiting professor into her ninth decade.

Sources

1. The HistoryMakers; BlackPast.org; Black Enterprise