ISSUED: 7 March 2014
MEDIA CONTACT: Valerie Owens
SHEPHERDSTOWN, WV — Dr. Julia Sandy-Bailey, assistant professor of history at Shepherd University, will present her talk “Advertising Jim Crow” Tuesday, March 25, at 12:30 p.m. in the Robert C. Byrd Center for Legislative Studies auditorium.
In the 1930s, the Great Depression forced American corporations to find new audiences, compelling the advertising industry to “discover” a previously unknown black consumer market. For the next 30 years, marketing experts sought to define, understand, and reach what they termed the “Negro market.” Sandy-Bailey’s talk looks at how they did so, and how their efforts created a racially segregated market outside of the gaze of white America. It also examines how black New Yorkers used the concept of the “Negro market” in their postwar civil rights activism.
Sandy-Bailey earned her undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Virginia and a Ph.D in history from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her research interests focus on the history of American social and political movements, especially the northern civil rights movement. She is currently working on a book-length manuscript about the black freedom movement in New York City which examines consumer rights and activism as part of that movement.
The Faculty Research Forum is a monthly lecture series implemented by the faculty and designed to highlight the current scholarship of Shepherd University faculty members. Presentations are drawn from across the campus community and are presented free of charge to faculty, staff, students, and members of the community. The purposes of the Faculty Research Forum are to bring together committed scholars from all disciplines, to highlight the scholarly accomplishments of Shepherd University faculty, to encourage collaborative relationships both within and across academic disciplines, and to contribute to the spirit of research and inquiry that defines what it means to be an institution of higher education.
For more information, go to www.shepherd.edu/aaweb/frf/.
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