I have read that planing end grain boards is a no no, but I have made 2 boards and planed them both as I don't have a drum sander. I am not advocating this, but this is how I did it.
I took super light cuts - my steel city planer with helical cutting head takes about 1/16" per turn and I do about 1/8 of a turn, so very light.
In order to stop the tear out on the back end I used a 1/4" round over bit on all 4 edges (I was going to round it over anyway). I only tried this on the last board. I used Padauk/Padouk which I found tears easily, but I did not have any tear out on this board.
I added a pic of the board I did.
Thanks
Robert