Using Black Celebrities To Push Pop, Pudding And Politics
In the 1960s, Tom Burrell helped change advertising by convincing agencies to tailor their pitches to black consumers, but he also saw his marketing work as part of a larger social project.
We take black mega-celebrity endorsers as a given today: Michael Jordan, Oprah Winfrey, Beyonce, the husk that was once Tiger Woods. They wield a kind of agency that seems to continually reset the upper limits of black aspiration, while remaining more or less incidental to the median black condition.
It wasn't always so. There was a moment in the 1960s, for example, when the Supremes were one of the biggest acts in show business, with a string of Top 10 hits. But the trio weren't making a lot of money endorsing products made by big
