On an autumn day in 2016 I decided that building diversity in the field was going to be the Museum’s new mission. While the mission had long been to “collect, preserve and exhibit the history of the PR field,” I decided that that day a much deeper, more meaningful mission had to be set into motion, and fast.
A grad class from George Washington University had come to visit the Museum, then situated on the 5th floor of the century-old Library of Baruch College. This was a fairly diverse class. The dozen or so students walked around to check out the many photos, books, and artifacts and then sat down to hear the lecture. As I was starting to recount the field’s beginnings, an African American woman in the front row raised her hand, interrupting me with a question that would forever change the Museum’s future.
“Professor?” she asked, pointing to the exhibits around the space. “How come no one here looks like me?” I was shocked, speechless. How come I had never thought of this before? Why were there no materials from professionals of color? And more important, who were these professionals?
“I promise you, Sandra,” I said, “we’re going to be fixing this, and soon.” On the evening of February 9, we held the industry’s very first Black PR History event, with Dr. Rochelle Ford, Dr. Denise Hill, Judith Harrison and Don Singletary, presenting the lives of three Black PR pioneers: Moss Kendrix, Ofield Dukes, and Inez Kaiser, who had died just a year before. We also had invited up Dukes’ daughter, Victoria, and Kendrix’s son, Rick, to pay tribute to their parents. The audience, who had to trudge through a record-setting blizzard to get there—Dr. Ford actually had to take a Greyhound all the way down from Syracuse—was standing room only. I looked around the room to see students, professionals, organization heads, mesmerized by stories of remarkable people they had never known existed. I saw more than a few I saw wiping away tears.
It was as if they were discovering long-lost relatives they never knew they had, a connection to a history that had previously been a void. The stories of these pioneers validated their own stories.
So this history that we’ve been indoctrinated were comprised only with white men, was now suddenly coming to life, and coming to life with people “who looked like them.”
Enabling students and young professionals to discover a deeper connection and meaning to this field is one reason Ms. Fisher’s book is so vitally important to today’s practice. While the field has made considerable progress in attracting more young people from underepresented groups, their numbers decline after four or five years. Perhaps they do not see a path ahead for themselves; perhaps they are realizing the field is just not right for them; perhaps they do not see enough “people who look like them” in leadership positions around them.
So while we’re increasingly seeing a fuller and fuller pipeline of well-qualified diverse job candidates coming into the field, for a variety of reasons, that pipeline becomes “leakier” the longer the candidates are employed in the field.
With this book, Dr. Fisher has set out to help put a stop to this cycle. Here, she chronicles the lives of diverse professionals—the trailblazers of today and yesterday who managed to push through the bias and inequities, to achieve leadership status as professionals and scholars, often becoming the first diverse professional in their institution.
Theirs are the stories whose lives today will inspire the professionals of tomorrow.
As a native of Mississippi, Dr. Fisher grew up in an environment still impacted by the Jim Crow era. She saw first-hand the impact of generations of racial discrimination—preventing promising young students from reaching their full potential, getting into college, and later, rising up the corporate ranks as quickly as they deserved. It drove her to learn from the diverse public relations pioneers who came before her, to learn about the ups and downs of their own careers, and specifically, how they rose up the ranks in corporations, agencies, and academia. It continues to be a mission of Dr. Fisher to help plug up the “leaky pipelines,” to encourage a more even playing field so that more diverse professionals will be able to see that success is possible for themselves. While Dr. Fisher still sees challenges, she is hopeful that it is increasingly possible for talented young people today to succeed. Here she outlines the myriad paths that are available for them to pursue, the growing industrywide support which they can now access, and the inspiring lessons to learn from the trailblazers that came before them.
For diverse young professionals today, who wish to pursue a career in this field, Dr. Fisher contends, there are more possibilities and industrywide encouragement than ever before.
By Shelley Spector, Founder, Museum of Public Relations