Off to see the WORLD

Starting in the 1950s, Jet magazine's longtime society editor Gerri Major wrote dispatches from glamorous locales around the globe. Her not-so-secret plan? Get her African-American readers to come join the fun.

- TANISHA FORD

Preparing for an international trip was a familiar routine for Gerri Major-she had crisscrossed the Atlantic so many times that her friends and colleagues had taken to calling her Gerri-Go-Round-but on one particular spring day in 1953, she was especially in her element. She wore a long-sleeve black dress, white gloves, and an on-trend black pillbox hat as she strode 9 at New York's International Airport. Major was headed to London to cover the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II for Jet magazine, where she worked as the society editor. The agent handed her a ticket, and at that moment one of Major's companions snapped a picture. That image, which ran a few weeks later in Jet, would become a kind of calling card for Major on her future adventures and a beacon to a growing fan base of similarly intrepid African-American travelers for whom Major had become an inspiration.

The coronation was a plum assignment for journalists lucky enough to receive press credentials from the British government. Back then, as now, the world was obsessed with royal news. But for Major, it was an opportunity to focus on Black travelers who attended the event. "There were twenty West African chiefs and tribal officials watching the ceremonies," she recalled in her book Black Society. A Benin prince and his companion from the Gold Coast "stopped London traffic" in their eyecatching native dress, with umbrellas that later "created a truly international atmosphere" at the queen's garden party.