Public relations and business responses to the civil rights movement

Public Relations Review 39 (2013) 63–73

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Public Relations Review

Public relations and business responses to the civil rights movement

Karen Miller Russell a,∗, Margot Opdycke Lamme b,1

a Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602-3018, United States b Department of Advertising & Public Relations, University of Alabama, Box 870172, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0172, United States

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:

Received 13 January 2012

Received in revised form

18 September 2012

Accepted 26 September 2012

Keywords:

Civil rights

Public relations

Business

Motivations

a b s t r a c t

During the 1950s and 1960s, U.S. civil rights protesters targeted businesses with demands

for service, jobs, and equality. Employing historical method, this study considers the role of

public relations by examining magazine, newspaper, and public relations trade press cover￾age of business responses to the civil rights movement. The analysis shows that, although all

five motivations for the adoption of the formal public relations function—profit, legitimacy,

recruitment, agitation, and advocacy—were present, business was slow to respond; that

riots and concerns about corporate image drove business to take a public stand; and that

professional public relations participation appeared to be minimal even as it was cited in

press stories as a reason for the failure of many business initiatives. In addition, the analysis

demonstrates the existence of a sixth motivation: fear.

© 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

In his 1944 study of American race relations, the Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal asserted, “To get publicity is of the

highest strategic importance to the Negro people.” Later, Roberts and Klibanoff (2006) explained, in their drive to challenge

Jim Crow laws and other barriers to equality, Black Americans harnessed publicity to convince other Americans how unequal

their lives were. Martin Luther King, Jr. concluded that it would be most effective to target businesses because they were

vulnerable to consumer pressure (Roberts & Klibanoff, 2006), which often led to media coverage.

This approach was most evident with the U.S. sit-in movement, which began in February 1960, when four young Black

men, freshmen at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College, sat down to order coffee and doughnuts at the lunch

counter of F.W. Woolworth’s in Greensboro and were refused service. Within days, 80 other students sat in shifts at Wool￾worth’s and Kress lunch counters there. Within weeks, demonstrations spread as far as Xenia, Ohio, and Sarasota, Florida,

with thousands of Black and White students in as many as 80 communities participating in protests (D’Angelo, 2001; Mann,

1996; Oppenheimer, 1989; Wallenstein, 2004). Picketers in Richmond urged Black patrons not to shop at one store by dis￾playing a sign that read “Can’t eat. . .Don’t buy.” Others encouraged shoppers to return their credit cards and wear old clothes

rather than shop in segregation (Cohen, 2003; D’Angelo, 2000; Wallenstein, 2004). Pushed into the public spotlight, business

had to find ways to serve both those who supported, and those who opposed, change (Wallenstein, 2004).

Civil rights and business historians have long recognized that targeting businesses was an important and often effective

strategy for the movement. In addition to sit-ins, they have documented activist boycotts and threats of boycotts, efforts by

business leaders to resolve political crises because they damaged growth and development, and gradual and often minute

steps taken by large corporations and small businesses to hire Black employees (Behnken, 2007; Broussard, 2006; Brown,

2006; Chafe, 1981; Fehn & Jefferson, 2010; Maddison, 2007). Other scholars have pointed out that business leaders in the

∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 706 542 5035.

E-mail addresses: [email protected] (K.M. Russell), [email protected] (M.O. Lamme).

1 Tel.: +1 205 348 5628.

0363-8111/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2012.09.008