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 possibly propel the general markets, which, at the time as is true now, midwhite consumers meant white consumers. Blacks were consumers. Domestic service remained the number one occupation for black women into world war ii. Many of them were the primary purchaser in their own home as well as the homes of their white employers. Africanamericans have often leveraged their consumer role seeking their rights, such as in the dont buy you kids were campaigns of the 1930s. Advertisements and popular postwar magazines, postworld war ii magazines, depicted africanamericans as a maid, waiter, personal servant. Field hand or slave over 75 of the time. Over 75 of the time africanamericans appeared not as consumers, or more pointedly as nonconsumers. The primary role was to visually and figuratively set off whites and their consumerism. Cocacola had been no exception. Ii theout of world war overriding denial of their consumer role presented africanamericans with a real problem. There was a time when every Major Institution in the country, including the government, big business, media and the church was instructed buy. Cans to buy, buy, the nation entered into reconversion and economic reorganization and recovery. Relations between United States and the communist soviet chillier byrowing the moment. American consumerism was perceived as essential to the nations economic health, security, global position and exceptionalism. These circumstances helped explain why during the early cold war years the American Dream was reorganized around an ecosystem ethos of mass consumption. Mass consumerism became a civic duty central to dominant definitions and expectations of american citizenship and americanness. In this context africanamericans suffered greatly for lack of a popularly recognized and accepted consumer identity. An identity best facilitated through advertising. Enteredwhen kendricks the civil rights narrative. Despite being one black man in a predominately white profession relation to cocacola gave him power. Why was that . Hiredcacola executives and essentialized kendricks as an nonblack people, and he encouraged this. They invested him with the corresponding authority to how to approach black markets. After world war ii cocacola was the most recognizable and most loved brand in the world. With an advertising budget that reflected and assured its status as such. Meeting kendricks exercised aaning kendricks exercised huge influential vehicle for producing and circulating mainstream visuals. With that power he directed cocacola to recognize and more importantly to represent africanamericans as quintessential consumers at precisely the time it mattered most. This is where his agenda converged with johnsons. Executivesacola into the New Territory of marketing to africanamericans required they be convinced of significant black and supermarkets. O, providing them a vehicle to target those markets, preferably without white noticing. Johnson accomplished both. By leveraging ebonys utility as a marketing tool, kendricks convinced the Cocacola Company to produce its first marketing materials that not only marketed to black consumers but noticing. Marketed blacks as consumers. Familyng in 1955, Favorite Campaign presented an image of blackness in which africanamericans appeared as typical americans, central to their own american stories by virtue of their belonging to happy and healthy Nuclear Families and modern middleclass households, and their enthusiastic embrace of a consumer lifestyle. These ads visually redefined africanamericans as integral members of the American Consumer class, which in the early cold war period asserted in amplified their belonging, value and contributions as consumer citizens. Thereby advancing their citizenship claims. Argue the image politics behind these ads different from the traditional respectability or politics or respectability impulse to show africanamericans as extraordinary or exceptional. Circulating through the marketplace of pop culture the s establishedte ad blacks as completely ordinary. They appeared as average americans, with average meaning normal. Representations of normality, these images made african megans culturally visible as ideal americans and also conveniently invisible as controversial or disturbing or different. Picturing blacks consuming rather than serving cocacola the marketing materials hendrix generated kendricks force associations between blackness and americanness with african erect is literally imbibing their american identity from green glass bottles. As a black marketer kendricks recruited one of the largest and most powerful corporations in the world at the time to the project of elevating africanamericans as good, normal americans by recognizing and representing them as good consumers. Given thedly activism ultimate goal was profit for cocacola and his own firm. But his image work in combination with johnson represented important civil rights work in that it absolutely furthered other contemporary civil rights efforts promoting firstclass citizenship for africanamericans. Argueat reason i would that this is no less a civil rights image and this than or this, ors, this. If i left it here, we would have an uplifting history of progress. Progressols of racial the early cocacola black ads were not without problems. To formulate africanamericans equality as consumers these ads mimicked cocacolas general market ads exactly. Contend these ads upheld racial boundaries and used visual culture by adhering to an identical but separate presentation of black societal positions at precisely the moment civil rights activists and organizations were assailing the separate but equal doctrine fundamental to racial segregation and discrimination. Most notably in the brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case. As they were very much intended, these market place images privileged middleclass blackness at a time when social, economic, political and explicitly racist barriers cap to africanamericans from a atdleclass experience, least as idealized in the American Dream. Similarly, they normaltivity. Ro these ads constructed in reinforced categories of exclusion that impeded and continued to impede africanamerican freedom and ofality, as well as that a other marginalized groups. Lhis is not a triumpha narrative. We need histories relevant to where we are and where we want to go. Useful histories are inherently complex. The history of how as black media and marketing men john johnson and kendricks made the market work for racial progress on their way to making money is complicated. It shows how in addition to protests, africanamericans have pursued their rights to institutions that rely on and reproduce in equity and equity and in inequality. My question becomes, could africanamericans in the postwar perio have avoided doing sod . That brings us all the way back to this question. Does the experience of freedom and equality in the United States required going through or shoring up institutions of oppression . Given the exclusionary elements i just pointed to in the black media images generated by postwar black capitalists we must consider this question is it possible to achieve freedom through the market . Both questions are equally vexing to me. They have been for a long, long time. And thean of color mother of a three and a halfyearold, you want to know what keeps me up at night . If the combination of the two. It is the combination of the two . What if it does require going to the market . Its impossible to achieve either through the market. Where does that leave us . Where does that leave her . Thank you. [applause] we will do things a little differently than we normally do we want to keep the camera in one place. If you have a question, stand and lined up the center of the aisle. We have a nice camera here for your questions. It is the same as it would normally be. We ask you make your question a question. If you have any questions, feel free to come forward. Hello, dr. Greer. Thank you for this wonderful talk. Last year was the 400th anniversary of africans being brought to the u. S. Through jamestown, virginia. On all ofour thoughts the articles we saw throughout the year encouraging africanamericans to invest in ghana and these images of black people on cruise ships coming to the west coast of africa and africag, reexperiencing and the profits made by these airlines and all these Different Hotels in africa . I wanted to get your thoughts on that. Dr. Greer that is not a small question. Not entirely in my purview but it is interesting, and this is touchy because as im sure everyone knows, kobe bryant died in Helicopter Crash last week. My husband immediately he was surprisingly really broken up about it. Himself wasoothed giting a tshirt with rldad on it. Then he talked about the capitalist market behind a tshirt. He said im just trying to have a moment here. He is a girl dad in that sense. I think it is complex. It is what i struggle with. One of the things i think leads to a lot of many people having expressed discomfort with my looking at black capitalists is because we dont with that idea of africanamericans or marginalized people participating in the way that everyone else participates in a capitalist climate to honor those things that matter to them. To relive their memories and get closer to their values that they have. There are some expectations that somehow people of color would live outside of the water they have been swimming in. Meis not any surprise to with any commemorative experience that some sort of marketdriven impulse will drive up around that. The question becomes for a lot of people the implications of that. I dont have an answer to whether or not i thought that was a good thing. It is not surprising to me at all. Thank you for the wonderful presentation. I think today we see pushback by activists on representation in media. Did you find people during the Civil Rights Movement critiquing images put out in a similar fashion we see today . Dr. Greer i will not say i found africanamericans critiquing in a similar fashion as today. You certainly find people critiquing the image politics or even the representations that resulted from different black movements. Their voices are very much covered up in a grander, more triumphalist narrative of how africanamerican activists marshaled the media for their purposes, particularly through nonviolent direct action, which i understand. It is one of the things im telling my students now, particularly in a social media. Its a trap that marginalized people fall into an African Americans have fallen into. A positive for a negative. With Michael Brown in particular , many people were trying to say he did not commit this crime of stealing cigarettes or whatever. Others are like he is dangerous, criminal. He was high or whatever. That is a trap. It is more useful to point to a regime of representation that would have it such that if you are a criminal or you have committed a crime, a small crime, suddenly you are out of the bounds of social justice where the justice system. You dont deserve the same protection. It is interesting to listen to my students wrestle with the representations of africanamericans or people of color. They have a whole new landscape. Thank you, dr. Greer. I learned a lot and you challenged my references and assumptions in many ways. Askfinal question led me to if you are familiar with friday magazine. When you had the simultaneous covers of life and ebony from 1937, those were the beginnings of life. Not knowe ebony ebony began at the same time. There was a friday magazine which would have matched your presentation. Based purely photographed and put together by activists from the new deal who had died which had died with the death of Franklin Roosevelt and were very progressive, very race conscious but mostly white contributors. I had the privilege of knowing the publisher of friday magazine. By 1939, friday magazine disappeared becmaau lzine had s. It was intended to be the progressive step forward for racial integration and for economic conversion out of the depression,of the the economic depression. Friday magazine in the contemporary criticism of the period destroyed friday magazine resented the image. Life magazine destroyed the possibility a corporate approach to image making through photography and popular distribution and ads to be the route to the future. Life stole the ads and friday died. If you find covers of friday magazine, you will see how it only lasted three years. Dr. Greer wow. Then it died because life took the image and ebony followed that. Dr. Greer i familiar with pm magazine. Some of the same authors. Dr. Greer that does not surprise me. A lot of this move towards photojournalism as a public entertainment or becoming valuable in a mainstream sense because of new deal photographers and the proliferation of documents and photographs. I have never heard of friday and i have spent a lot of time around life magazine and pm magazine so i appreciate that. You use the term civil rights work rather than activism. Thetlanta, atlanta promoted image of a city too busy to hate. At the same time they were clear limits. We came to atlanta and walked where kendras walked. You did not go to emory because he was not allowed to be a student at emory. Is there a way we can use this to critique not simply black capitalists but also white capitalists in terms of atlanta was too busy to hate within limits . Dr. Greer absolutely. Too busy to hate is a slogan in terms of drawing investments to your city. One thing that is interesting about kendricks is a lot of people are like how did he get hooked up with cocacola . Remember when i said i went to the golf courses . That is where he met the executives. That was a very paternalistic relationship to a degree but when he cultivated and capped over time. From 1944 cocacola until 1951 when they finally contracted him. Pepsi likely become was succeeding where they pepsi was succeeding where they werent. The relationships between the cocacola executives in the land of atlanta this gets a little dangerous. They did not hire kendricks because they were trying to become a racially progressive company. The fact kendricks was not an employee, he was contracted, was useful to them. And kendricks. It allowed him to take on other clients. There is a reason him being freelance and never considered a white collar black employee of cocacola was useful and did not disrupt their hiring practices in any way. There is a lot of criticism or critique to go around, particularly in terms of looking at a capitalist enterprise. Which again, johnson and kendricks people come to me about my research. He was pretty sneaky or that is not how i am writing about them. Or, you dont really like or, you dont really like kendricks. Are you kidding . I am in love with kendricks. It is the idea they are doing these activities automatically making them nefarious in some way. I dont fault kendricks or johnson for looking at their circumstances. Both were clearly and neatly geared towards business in that sense. The question the ideas that johnson and kendricks had about black people to make them a special market you needed special people to market to them. Dids problematic but they did precisely that precisely because the cocacola executives believed that. Throughout history you have example after example of marginalized communities playing on the racism or racist ideology of the dominant class. In this sense im not saying that was their primary practice or strategy, but there is an element of that here. Criticism orty of at least critique to go around. Hi. Thank you for your presentation. I wanted to go back to class status. I wanted to know if any of the know if any of the middleclass blacks give any pushback . I ask that because clearly they were being used in a sense to further this capitalist enterprise. Was there any pushback from the middleclass blacks . I also wanted to know about the consumerism, excuse me, of the working class blacks. Even though they were not the ones being featured, did they still consume just as much as other middleclass blacks . Thats a great question and i will have to speak to a generally. Im laughing in my head because the last time i gave this lecture my father was in the audience. He was the only africanamerican of the right age to answer your question. I said appear and answered it. Out of my research he raised his hand, to which i said, yes, dad . [laughter] he stood up and gave his eyewitness account of the period. Thing thing ebony is useful to researchers that johnson consolidated so Much Research on black consumers. That provides some useful detail in terms of figuring out what consuming was across black classes. It. Out of my research he raised his hand, to which ione thing ebony reveas that africanamericans of the middleclass were not pushing back against this image. Hadough Martin Luther king several speeches in which he really demonized the consumerist thos. He did so in his advice column in avenue magazine. Magazine. Ebony magazine. There is also a lot of evidence that working class blacks, generally speaking, while not middleclass, particularly at the advent of ebony, aspired to be. It was not just a magazine marketed towards middleclass blacks. It was an instructional magazine in that sense. A lot of African Americans consumed it in that way. My father talks about jet magazine and ebony magazine. He says 70 was the magazine you ony was a magazine you kept on your coffee table. Jet was kept on the nightstand. It encouraged a lot of aspirational, in terms of consumerism among African Americans, again generally speaking. This is maybe a more general question about capitalism. In looking at the things you brought up it is kind of shocking these ideas were not obvious then, 50, 80, 100 years ago and it took so much happened for these to become accepted ideas. That africanamericans were a marketplace. The question is, what are we missing today . Where are we neglecting ideas today . Where are we exasperating existing problems today . For questions. Big questions. Dr. Greer is a huge question for me given my generation. Hi tj consumerism class. My students are blowing apart my understanding of consumerism, with the platforms and apps and where they consume and cost of the rebranding themselves. One thing i put to them is the idea of specialized marketing, which grew out of this moment. The benefits and consequences of that because the way i like to mess with their minds is i say, you know, there is absolute value and psychic value in thinking of yourself as a special group. Africanamericans have a shared experience that is special and unique. As soon as you put up markers, it those same markers that are used to make you different, make you inferior. Whene are in a time markets are more segmented than ever because of the different ways in which you can reach consumers. Those segments are not as impactful. I am not seeing the same things and same messages my students are in a way that once upon a time you could not keep those messages separate. In terms of what we are missing, you know, i dont know we are missing it because it has become such a focal points of National Politics. A historianrious as where ther to see w formation of identity through social media. I do spend a lot of time watching my students canceling each other out. They are really curating them in the themselves energy for them to be certain brands in different places is tiring. It is tiring them out and also making them invest in things i think are serving the very people that they would say that they are oppositional to. In every classroom i have my students routinely decry capitalism. I always say, how many of you have an iphone . Ititalism is the enemy, yet is interesting the choices that they make. They think some of these new technologies are allowing them to be more activist in a way, and activists against capitalism than is actually true. We see that in terms of green campaigns and love yourself campaigns. They are just campaigns. They are marketing campaigns. I dont know what we are missing. That is the problem. Those are the things im interested in. Any more questions . Please. Thank you for your presentation. You brought pictures from google search. Who willfrom now, historians analyze . The big Search Engines and big databases. Are there any units receptive to your message . Marches. These if there is an opening for them whenlabel these pictures, the new generation searches for images they end up with more diversity and complex narratives . Dr. Greer i dont know. My understanding is what comes back is formulated to what people are looking for. Thething that strikes me is image search is how racialized it is as blacks. Every image you saw was about the Civil Rights Movement. I dont know. I have not been in contact with google. I think about historians 15 years ahead and the amount of information that will be available to them but they will have to wade through. I found Google Analytics to be useful in terms of the reception or perceptions now of things that happened in the past and the same utility will be useful for people in the future thinking about perceptions now. I dont know in terms of i dont know i would have that much clout but i dont know in terms of how that would work or if they would be receptive to it. It has been useful to me. It has a currency among presentday audiences because most of us use google and everything that communicates what i am trying to argue in some sense. Wow. That was impressive. Thank you for this. The slide you had where john johnson is quoted saying i am not interested in making history. Im interested in making money. My mind went to jayz, who recently was at the super bowl or something. He did not stand up for the pledge or whatever. It was because he is working it. He has i think about black capitalism particularly in terms of these artists, and i am sure there are plenty postwar who are doing something similar to jc jay z, being critiqued for their nonactivism. Have you done any work and can you say anymore about the artists who work in tripping to this culture . One of the people that i write about in my book is gordon parks who i think most people, depending on when you know him. If you know him as the director of shaft, you might think of him differently, but really he promoted this idea of himself through his photography and referred to his camera as a weapon. In the book i talk about how he aally started out as photographer producing war propaganda. Out of that he went and worked the United Steel Corporation as one of its best paid employees i am forgetting the name of the actual corporation, but help them with a campaign because it was clear that they had ties to the germans during world war ii. It is this attempt to rehabilitate their image. One of the things that is interesting to me is how his artist andhis activist, if youve seen his forography, there is reason valuing that, but he was always big of either state or capitalist enterprises. He went from that Steel Corporation to life magazine and was their only black photographer and capitalized on it. In 1940s, when he got out of the office of war information, there is a feature in ebony that is critical of him because he moved to new york and he would travel to europe that maybe he had forgotten his roots and was not using his camera in the same way. He said i am doing this study in harlem, you just wait for it. He did it, but he gave it to life. He really wanted to be a photographer for life magazine. He recognized the currency in the office of war information, and they recognized his ability of being a photographer and sometimes he played off of that. He is this interesting figure to me because he definitely was in a valuablet way that is the best example i have. That is chapter two of the book. Any more questions . Before we close, we have a couple of announcements. If there are people outside, we can take your name, and every bookstore has copy somewhere and they can arrange for you to purchase it and have it sent to you. We will be back here same time same place next week. Please join me in thanking the doctor. [applause] this is American History tv, events and interviews and visits to College Classrooms and museums, exploring the past every weekend on cspan3. War, this is ail description of confederate veterans after the civil war and challenges preconceptions about this Mississippi State pension system. The National Civil war museum hosted this event. Welcome, everyone. We are excited today to have dr. Susanna hurl. Little bit about her. She has this extensive background and biography. Her credentials are many. I will read this because i dont want to mess anything up in her introduction. She is the professor of history for the dale center for the study of war and society at the university of southern mississippi. She specializes in 19th century
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