Marcia Ann Gillespie, the pioneering journalist who led ESSENCE through its formative years and later became the first Black woman to serve as editor-in-chief of a mainstream American magazine, has died. She was 82. Her death was announced October 31, with tributes pouring in from colleagues who remembered her as brilliant, forthright, and endlessly supportive.
Born July 10, 1944, in Rockville Centre, New York, Gillespie grew up on Long Island in a working-class household; her father worked as a church sexton and ran a floor-waxing business, while her mother worked as a domestic employee and ran her own catering company. She graduated from Lake Forest College in 1966 with a degree in American studies before moving to New York City, where she began her publishing career as a researcher at Time-Life Books.
In 1970, Gillespie joined ESSENCE, then a brand-new publication, as managing editor. Within a year, at just 26, she was named editor-in-chief. Reflecting on the appointment in a 2017 interview with Black Enterprise, she said part of how she earned the role was having “the audacity to think I knew what the magazine needed.” Over the following decade, she built ESSENCE into one of the fastest-growing women’s magazines in the country, creating a trusted editorial space for Black women who had rarely seen their lives reflected with similar depth in national publications. She also served as vice president of Essence Communications from 1975 to 1980 and sat on its board of directors during that time.
Gillespie was known for cultivating editorial talent, including Susan L. Taylor, who would eventually succeed her as ESSENCE’s editor-in-chief. Taylor has credited Gillespie as her “greatest encouragement” during her early days writing the magazine’s fashion and beauty pages, recalling that Gillespie would tell her, “if you can speak you can write.”
After leaving ESSENCE in 1980, Gillespie was invited by Gloria Steinem to join Ms. magazine, rising from contributing writer to executive editor before becoming editor-in-chief in 1992. Her appointment made her the first Black woman to lead a mainstream American magazine. She went on to co-found Liberty Media for Women, which acquired Ms. in 1998 and relaunched it the following year, with Gillespie serving as president, before guiding the publication to its new home with the Feminist Majority Foundation in 2001.
Beyond magazine leadership, Gillespie lectured widely on campuses and before women’s groups starting in 1971, taught media and communications as a visiting professor at SUNY Old Westbury, and co-authored the 2008 authorized biography Maya Angelou: A Glorious Celebration. At the time of her death, she had been working on her own memoir, titled When Blacks Became Americans. She also served on the boards of several organizations, including the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the Global Fund for Women, and the Arthur Ashe Institute of Urban Health, among others.
Her honors included the Matrix Award from New York Women in Communications, a Life Achievement Award for Print Journalism from the New York Association of Black Journalists, the Mary McLeod Bethune Award from the National Council of Negro Women, and a National Magazine Award. Time magazine named her one of its Fifty Faces for America’s Future, and Lake Forest College honored her with its Outstanding Alumni Award and an honorary Doctor of Letters. Her papers are preserved in the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College.
From a working-class household on Long Island to the editor’s desk at ESSENCE at just 26, Marcia Ann Gillespie spent a career building space for Black women’s stories to be told with the depth they deserved, and opening doors for the generations of journalists who followed her.