• Introduction
• Emory Douglas and the Black Panther Party
• Malcolm X and the Media
• Advertisers Discover
  Black America
• In Our Lives We are Whole: Snapshots of Everyday Life, 1935-1975

With the increased buying power of black Americans, big business took note of the black consumer market. In the early years of the civil rights movement, ads featuring nonmenial black characters and celebrities were relegated to African American periodicals. While some companies provided ads to these magazines that were race-neutral or featured white actors, others retrofitted existing campaigns or designed new ones to appeal to black readers.

As the movement drew to a close in the early-1970s, mainstream publications accepted and promoted marketing campaigns directed at black readers. A far cry from the amiable and compliant black servants who populated print advertisements for much of the twentieth century, the subjects of these ads were more or less positive.