Next on American History tv, the black image makers who reimagined African American citizenship which focuses on University Hosts thisemory event. I am the director of the institute. On behalf of the visiting fellows and our staff i would like to welcome you to todays installment of the colloquium series. We do this every week. We are glad for those who come regularly. We hope you come back same place next week. We will have another interesting speaker. It is our pleasure to do this with emory library. We hope you can come back. Today it is my pleasure to welcome dr. Brenna greer. Is an associate suppressor at wellesley college. Historian of race, gender and culture in the 20th century United States. She explores connections between capitalism, social movement and culture. She will be speaking on her first book, represented the black imagemakers who reimagined African American citizenship. Examines the work of black media makers and marketers in the world war ii era who garnered Media Representative representation that forged associations between blackness and americaness. Our next book looks at black commercial publishing and its significance in culture and black life. Dr. Greer received a report from numerous organizations support from numerous organizations including the Andrew W Mellon foundation, the Woodrow Wilson national foundation, the American Council of learned societies, that your public library, and the Niehaus Center for the humanities. We are happy to see the connections there as well. Join me in welcoming dr. Brenna greer. [applause] can everyone hear me . Great. I need toet going, take an opportunity to thank the people who made it possible for me to be here with you today. Most notably dr. Gillespie, but Rhonda Patrick and antoinette burrell who facilitated every aspect of my visit. It has been lovely. Im very appreciative to have this opportunity to be a part of this series. I am more than a bit envious of this opportunity you have on a weekly basis to come and experience and consider various takes on race. That is quite a luxury. It seems like a productive and collective space for that. Its an honor to be here. I should thank you for being here. I will do my best to honor your choice to spend your lunch hour with me. See, the title is the civil rights work of black capitalists. Isdr. Gillespie said, it based on material from my first book, represented the black imagemakers who reimagined African American citizenship. History. It was finally released in july. My plan is to first spend time laying out the broad contours of my research and the questions project,ght me to the then to zero in any particular part of the history the book tells. For the better part of a decade i have been consumed with the for get into africanamerican strategic efforts to advance their social positions and secure their rights during and after world war ii. I am hardly alone in this focus of visual media and the politics of race. Many scholars have and will study this relationship. There is more than enough to go the history of black liberation movements in the United States can be characterized as a struggle over images as much as it has been a struggle for rights or equal access. This is the premise that undergirds my research. Usssume most if not all of have no problem accepting media depictions can breed stereotypes. Though stereotypes then can have real effects on peoples lived experiences. The example i often use with my students is law order. Out of curiosity, how many dun dun . A fan. Once upon a time, criminal intent was appointment intent for me. You cant help but notice across the entire franchise the primary role of black and brown men is to inject a menacing dynamic in any given scene. The shows producers consistently and heavily relied on men of color as a plot device for a visual shorthand to communicate to viewers that the main characters, the protagonists have entered a scenario or environment that is dodgy, criminal or dangerous. Representations reflect but also ensure society alread asus this problem is bigger than law and order or television. Countless stereotypical images circulate through present day u. S. Culture. U. S. Visual culture. Competely they also with an abundance of alternative and complex images of blackness that are moving through todays media and pop culture. This was notagine the case in the preworld war ii era. Thehe prewar United States popular representation of blackness was primarily a white project. Africanamericans had little access to or control over the technology or channels of mainstream media. What did that look like . Let me give you an example. Cover937 life magazine captures how the circumstances i just described to you translated in terms of black americans depiction in the media. Although a relatively new publication at the time, life magazine was wildly popular but a paid circulation over one million and eight pass along circulation over 4 million. Hardpressede been to find a more influential visual media space than the magazines cover. This is the magazines first cover to feature an african macon man. As you may imagine, africanamericans did not celebrate this as a reputational breakthrough. Blacknessar image of this picture of a faceless, upfront lists, shirtless, literally backward black labor tapped prevailing stereotypes linking blacks to watermelons reinforced notion of African American secondclass status. It was hardly alone. Going into world war ii images that asserted africanamerican inferiority proliferated in culture. Depicting the most primitive, simple,hifty servile, and above all comical. Historically problematic, these images became more injurious during the 1930s. United states was giving birth to a fullblown visual culture in which the rise of photojournalism and other medias thatmaking it images were replacing words as a primary means for conveying information and shaping thought. Nowadays we take our image saturated culture for granted. In the 1930s it was becoming. The shift made racist images of black people more impactful. But, with the rise of the images, while it represented new challenges, if presented new resources for defining themselves in their own image. Blackwork i put capitalists image makers at the center of that project of racial redefining. By image maker i mean a person or institute that produced or facilitated the production of media images. Twoy book i focus on these image makers, publishing magnet john h johnson, the publisher of ebony and jet magazines, and Public Relations glue guru moss kendricks. In the world war ii and early cold war years, johnson and kendricks belonged to a handful of businessmen that capitalized literally on new technologies, cultural trends, National Politics and consumer demands to popularize media images of black america that represented africanamericans against stereotypes and keeping with prevailing definitions of americanness. Make no mistake. They did this because it was profitable. In fact, when asked in his later years about the historical significance of ebony in particular, john johnson clarified that he was not trying to make history. He was trying to make money. Imaginedd know i never unabashed capitalist would be. At the center of at the center of my work, ever. I was going to write a book about black women activism in the black freedom movement. What could possibly explain this shift . You could trace it back to my experiences teaching and graduate school. In the classroom i was consistently struck and frustrated by many of my students seeming inability, regardless of race, to conceive of complex black historical actors. Understand begin to this was in part because in the popular narrative of black history or u. S. History, celebratory narratives of a chosen few heroic figures have come to stand in for complex histories of black people and black life. This is never more evident than right now in february during black history month. Right . Allow me to demonstrate. Yesterday i did an image search of the term black history month. What returned, of no surprise, was collage after collage of primarily the same people. Surprisingly, oprah is not any of them. She usually fares strongly in there. Americans are absolutely historically significant. They deserve to be recognized. They should be studied, preferably in all months. In their iconic or symbolic forms these figures leave my students, and i would argue the multitude, with representations of blackness that have been so flattened out as they have all the personhood of a paper doll. They come with a limited number of outfits or roles. Historian iights have the knowledge that often simplistic representations of blackness and black history are the result of image politics that African Americans have used in their struggle to combat racism. I think a prime example is rosa parks. Parks was anow know radical activist who doggedly and openly fought for African American civil rights and fought against Sexual Violence towards black women and frequently defied segregationist policies long before she refused to give up her seat on a bus in 1955, lighted parks fashion and help promote an image of herself as a mildmannered and accidental activist . These are the questions that plagued me. I wanted to know what representational strategies that activists like parks used to break down barriers and gain political public support. What informed those strategies . Those are the questions i went looking for in trying to find cultural ideas and resources that likely influenced africanamerican image politics in the postwar or early civil rights period. My search led me to media representations of blackness, both visual and conceptual, produced by black media and Marketing Enterprises. Which then required i look into those businesses as much as i tried to resist that. Seriously considering the significance to postwar black politics and progress. That is how i went from examining black womens civil rights activism to concentrating on the capitalist media and Marketing Enterprises of black men. In making the shift i had not anticipated more than a few would, academics and non, consider my focus to be problematic and even offensive. It quickly became clear we dont like capitalist generally speaking in our civil rights stories, unless they are finding activism. Finding activism. I think i understand why. For some of the reasons why. First, the civil rights narrative features exclusively on activists and their grassroots activism. Dont believe me . Lets turn to google. I did image search of the term civil rights. What returned was image after image of activist figures engaged in nonviolent direct protest actions. Dont get me wrong. Activists and protest actions should be central to the story. I believe these pictures of civil rights history are notionsrmined and have that capitalists have little to no place in the story. That theinced also general exclusion of black capitalists from the broader civil rights story reflects a general discomfort with the idea of marginalized people participating in and promoting power structures that facilitate their oppressors. Then we must wrestle with an uncomfortable question. Freedom experience of for equality in the United States require going through or shoring up institutions of oppression . But to exclude capitalists from the story isolates africanamericans in their struggle and isolates the struggle from usually significant forces that shaped the postwar United States. Not the least of which was shifting market dynamics. Indeed focusing on black capitalists image makers who are operating in that moment revealed connections between a burgeoning Civil Rights Movement and the rise in political significance of mass consumption and developments in postwar marketing. Especially advertising. Contentiont is my while not activists, these historical black actors performed in essential civil rights work. Use term iite to nonactivist activities through which africanamericans pursued firstclass citizenship, including activities that were not oppositional or explicitly political or progressive. With the remainder of my time i will outline johnson and work bys civil rights demonstrate how through their businesses they elevated africanamericans specifically by redefining them as consumer citizens, which in the mid20th century benefited their quest to combat racism, experience national belonging, and secure the rights of firstclass citizens. Johnson. Art with as some of you no doubt know, in 1942, john johnson, a southern migrant took chicago founded negro digest. Asthe time it was described a subscriptionbased compendium of news items and articles about black people in addition and issues. Agro digest was immediately hit amongst africanamericans. That emboldened johnson to expand his publishing enterprise. In 1945, immediately after the wars end, he launched ebony magazine, a largeformat black lifestyle photo magazine. Johnson conceived of and authored it as the black counterpoint to life magazine. You can see a little mimicking there, which was a common johnson practice. Johnson described his photo magazine as an antidote to the white medias representation of blacks as secondclass citizens or freaks. It was a product he believed for which there was a waiting market. He was right. To use his words, ebony shot out of the gate like a thoroughbred stallion. Its success transformed what was a small shoestring operation on the south side into a media empire with its winky worldwide headquarters located in chicagos south loop. It turned out that in the postwar moment the very racism that allowed so many negative media images of black americans insured black authored positive representations of black america for Good Business were Good Business. Is monthly circulation skyrocketed from 50,000 to 275,000 within just three months at the magazines life. While not on the scale of life magazine, have anys circulation numbers made black ebonys circulation numbers made lacked buyers visible. It was usually important to the project to the project visually and culturally redefining blackness. I will detail that a little. Prior to johnson no black publisher had created a black magazine that was successful with Major National advertisers. This was a problem because contrary to what many people think, Magazine Publishers do not profit from selling magazines. They live and die by selling ad space in the magazine. It was the failure to sell enough ad space that accounts for why all commercial black periodicals before ebony failed. By contrast, ebonys unprecedented circulation numbers exposed black markets the size of which white advertisers could no longer afford to ignore, whatever the racial politics might have been. Within three years of ebonys lunch, johnson secured lucrative advertising contracts with major white corporations, including pepsi, each knot, colgate, venus radio and capital and mgm records. The Johnson Publishing company was able to produce multiple magazines, including jet, tan, hue, and copper romance. 1950s, thehe Early Company had become the most powerful black owned means of world,ication in the and history. It had real power to shift the representation of africanamericans in media. Whoops. Right. 10 years. Im sorry. I think the political importance of johnsons image making enterprise becomes even clear when you link it to him moss kendricks. Who is moss kendricks. He is in fact a native son of atlanta. The last time i spent any significant time here i can to get a sense of how kendricks lived and moved to the city on his way to becoming a successful prominent black marketer. Iring a oneweek period walked the streets of an area whats known as the beaver slide islam. Slum. D the i found the bungalow home he spent his childhood. I found his uncles cleaning and pressing shop, and walked to the greens of the cost courses golf courses where he caddied as a youth. And in morehouse college. I also visited the location of his first office in the ymca building on buckner street. During the Great Depression kendricks worked as a Government Employee doing Public Relations and publicity for new deal programs. During world war ii, the u. S. Army drafted kendricks literally to do the same kind of work. By the wars end kendricks was eager to move away from nonprofit Public Relations on behalf of the state to commercial marketing, which he believed understandably might be personally more profitable. Assumption, in 1948, he founded his own Public Relations firm in washington, d. C. , the moss kendricks organization. Through this firm he marketed himself as an expert on the eager market the negro market. ,n 1951, using a sales pitch kendricks landed the Cocacola Company is a client that established him as one of the most prominent black marketing meant on the eastern seaboard. Out of curiosity, how many of you have heard of him . Right. Crazy. Kendrickspicture of in his office at mhko. Notice the cocacola bottle in front of him. During the time he represent a cocacola through the mid1960s, he rarely appeared in public as possible without hand or a coke in nearby. That degree of a marketing fanatic that he was. Cocacola contracted kendricks to formulate and oversee its turn towards africanamericans, which after the war for being touted as a huge under taft market the size of underraptapped market the size f canada. They were losing business to their competitors. Hoo. J otably pepsi and cocacola was hardly a learn. Advertisers did not target africanamericans because of other things they did not think blacks had money. They thought blacks were too unsophisticated to respond to targeted appeals, and it did not want their product to be considered black products. Thus p