PRWeek’s Hidden Historical past Household Tree, produced in partnership with The Museum of Public Relations, is a welcome try to rebalance the books in terms of assessing the roots of PR.
It options 30 people of Black, Hispanic and AAPI descent who symbolize an alternate view of the pioneers usually referenced in terms of the historical past of the career.
The likes of Edward Bernays, Ivy Lee and Betsy Plank are the primary names who usually crop up in such discussions. PRWeek’s personal Forefathers of PR piece to rejoice our 25th anniversary within the U.S. centered on 4 white males: Al Golin, David Finn, Harold Burson and Dan Edelman.
For Hidden Historical past, these common suspects have been changed by the likes of Ofield Dukes, Lynne Choy Uyeda, Patricia Tobin, Donald Padilla and Bayard Rustin. A few of them had media and political roots in addition to communications. Others had been early examples of influencers of their specialist areas.
All of them confronted adversity of their private and enterprise lives that they overcame with energy and persistence. All of them made a giant distinction. The Hidden Historical past Household Tree gives a small glimpse into their lives and contributions – there may be far more in-depth content material about them on the Museum’s web site.
Rustin’s life story is unbelievable. He organized the Martin Luther King “I’ve a dream” march in Washington, DC in 1963 and just about constructed the template for a way mass occasions comparable to this had been organized in future. A mentor to King, Rustin was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013 by President Obama, who referred to as him “an unyielding activist for civil rights, dignity, and equality for all.”
Rustin was arrested throughout his teen years for refusing to depart whites-only areas in eating places and the movie show in his hometown of Westchester, Pennsylvania. It set him on the trail to a lifetime of activism and awareness-raising.
Mabel Ping-Hua Lee campaigned for girls’s suffrage. Within the Twenties she grew to become the primary Chinese language lady within the U.S. to earn a doctorate in economics. Lynne Choy Uyeda grew to become the primary Asian lady within the U.S. to discovered a PR agency and she or he remains to be alive aged 86. Jesse Lewis based one of many first African American-owned PR corporations and can be nonetheless alive in the present day on the grand previous age of 99.
These pioneers and the remainder of the people on the Hidden Historical past Household Tree are usually not simply function fashions for up-and-coming numerous PR professionals, they’re exemplars all of us can study from.
