From white bank officers to the editor of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's (NAACP) nonprofit publication, all agreed that a magazine aimed at a black audience had no chance for any kind of success.

Johnson at the time worked at the Supreme Liberty Life Insurance Company and had the idea of funding the Negro Digest by writing everyone on their mailing list and soliciting a two-dollar, prepaid subscription, calculating that even a 15 percent response would give him the amount needed to publish the first issue.

He provided valuable marketing ideas and opened the doors that allowed Negro Digest to hit the newsstands in other urban centers.

In 1970, the periodical was renamed Black World to more accurately reflect the range of its audience, which extended to Africa and much of the African diaspora.

[5] By 1970, a typical issue contained approximately eight articles, a couple of short stories, poems, and a section called "Perspectives", which was a collection of cultural information prepared by Fuller.

Although Negro Digest/Black World gave way to other African-American magazines such as Ebony, Jet and Essence, it significantly impacted the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and early '70s, and as well as literary work showcased reproductions of artworks.

In the words of Chris Brancaccio: "Negro Digest/Black World is a fascinating artifact because the content of each issue seems to evade rigid binaries like integrationist or nationalist, and therefore became a very real space for public debate.