The Hagley Digital Archives are alive and growing again, and one of it's newest additions is a recently acquired publication in our collection of rare pamphlets.
This November 1940 issue of The Brown American was one of the many publications spearheaded by Joseph V. Baker Associates, a public relations firm founded by Joseph V. Baker (1908-1993).
Baker was a prominent Black journalist and public relations specialist working out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After his family relocated to Philadelphia from South Carolina in the 1920s, Baker attended Temple University as a journalism student. After graduating, he began work at the Philadelphia Tribune, the city’s Black newspaper, where he would eventually work as city editor. Baker would also write for The Philadelphia Inquirer, where he became the paper’s first Black journalist.
After leaving the Tribune, Baker was hired by the Pennsylvania Railroad as a Public Relations consultant, which began his career in the field. Joseph V. Baker Associates was founded in New York in 1934, making it one of the nation’s first Black-owned public relations firms. Under Baker’s leadership, the agency’s clients included various large corporations and educational institutions. In addition to the Pennsylvania Railroad, its client list featured corporations such as the Gillette Corporation, RCA, Procter & Gamble, Chrysler, DuPont, U.S. Steel, Western Union, NBC, the California and Ohio state Republican parties, as well as a number of famous Black entertainers.
The Brown American featured perspectives on Black achievement in American business, industry, military, and higher education; this issue contains articles and photographs covering Pennsylvania's Cheyney State Teachers' College (the nation's first HBCU), the historically Black fraternity Kappa Alpha Psi, the all-Black National Planning Board of the Republican National Committee, and the Kay Boys' Club, a youth group led by William S. Howell, a Black political figure and community leader in Pittsburgh.
Additional articles cover news of notable achievements and activities from Black Americans nationwide, news on industry and business affecting Black America, a review of W.E.B. Du Bois' Dusk of Dawn, and a poem by Theodore Anthony Stanford, a young Black poet from Philadelphia.
Baker's other publishing projects included titles like Inside Brown America, Caravan, The Watchman (published for the American Insurance Association), The Wayfarer (for the Chrysler Motors Corporation), On the Track (for the Association of American Railroads), the entertainment industry journal The Baton, and The Industrial Statesman.
To view a selection of material associated with Joseph V. Baker in Hagley Library's Digital Archives, including this one, just click here!