Image with bold text: "Celebrating Black History Month" on red, yellow, and green brushstrokes. February is noted below.

Black History Month (BHM) is an important time to acknowledge and celebrate the critical contributions Black individuals and communities have made throughout the history of the United States. In this February’s edition of the Nicholson News, we recognize the Black figures in history that have made a significant contribution to the field of communication and media.

Information about each of these figures was excerpted from 28 Black Pioneers in Journalism, Design and Technology by Vince Dixon.


Public Relations Specialist Barbara Harris

Barbara Harris worked for Joseph V. Baker Associates where she became the first Black woman to handle public relations accounts for large corporations. She also handled media relations for actor Roxie Roker of The Jeffersons, RCA, Harry Belafonte and Marian Anderson. While working at Joseph V. Baker Associates, Harris created a Division of Women’s Information and edited a publication for homemakers. In 1958, she became president of the firm, and in 1973, she was elected president of the Philadelphia chapter of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA). Harris was also involved in the Civil Rights Movement. Some of her many contributions include registering Black voters in Mississippi and marching with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr in Selma, Alabama. She supported women’s rights and campaigned for the involvement of women in the Anglican clergy. In 1977 she studied theology at the Metropolitan Collegiate Center at Villanova University and then continued her studies at the Urban Theology Unit in Sheffield, England. She graduated from the Pennsylvania Foundation for Pastoral Counseling and was ordained a deacon in 1979, and a priest in 1980. While in this new role, Harris used her public relations background to become executive director of the Episcopal Church Publishing Company. She was also editor, publisher and columnist for a socially progressive Episcopal journal, The Witness.

 

Journalist Joseph Varney Baker

In pursuit of an education, Baker attended Temple University where he studied journalism. Shortly after attending Temple, Baker was hired by an African American newspaper called the Philadelphia Tribune where he served as city editor. During his adult life, Baker wrote for myriad Black newspapers and made history as the first Black journalist to write for the Philadelphia Inquirer. In 1934, Baker created Joseph V. Baker Associates, the first Black-owned public relation firm in the United States. His firm continued to change the course of history by becoming the first Black public relations firm to acquire large accounts from various U.S. corporations. In 1958, Baker was elected the first African American president of the Philadelphia Public Relations Society of America, which led him to be the first African American to receive accreditation from PRSA.

 

Journalist Roi Ottley

By 1944 Roi Ottley was already famous for his Peabody-winning literary journalism “A New World A-Coming: Inside Black America,” in which he chronicled life in Harlem. But he had no plans on retiring early. Ottley became one of the first Black war correspondents, venturing off to Europe to cover World War II for multiple publications. There, he documented the racial tensions and life of segregation for Black soldiers. Though much of his writing was censored, he kept all his observations in his journals, some of which were published more than 60 years later in a book about Ottley’s career. After the war, Ottley continued traveling and corresponding for the Pittsburgh Courier while freelancing for other publications, including the New York Times. In 1950 he moved to Chicago where he became a local fixture, writing for the Chicago Tribune (its first Black reporter and columnist) and hosting an interview show on WGN radio.

 

Irvine Garland Penn’s The Afro-American Press and Its Editors

As African American periodicals boomed in the late 19th century, many leaders in the black community celebrated the rise of the black press’s achievements. “The Afro-American Press and Its Editors,” by church leader and educator Irvine Garland Penn, profiled America’s leading Black journalists and newspapers between 1827 and 1891, when the book was published. Predating the Pew Research Center’s reports on the State of the News Media, Garland’s book featured biographies for the country’s top Black journalists, including an entire chapter dedicated to Black women in the industry. Like today’s trade research, Garland also dove into industry trends and methods. One chapter examined the rise of “illustrated journalism,” chronicling the impact that visuals and illustrations have on news. The book, full of hand-drawn portraits of its various subjects, is said to be one of the most influential records of the early Black news media, frequently cited in works covering the birth of the Black press.

 

Streaming Service Trailblazer Lisa Gelobter

The rise of video streaming began with the multimedia platform Shockwave, developed by Macromedia. Streaming pioneers like YouTube and Netflix built their sites on the program, before moving to HTML5. But this would not have been possible without the people who developed Shockwave. That includes Lisa Gelobter, a computer scientist, executive and project manager who led the product development team during the release of Shockwave and Flash. Gelobter eventually wrote the code for Shockwave’s ActiveX plugin for Internet Explorer. Millions of content-creators have since used Shockwave to publish video, animations and other multimedia to the web. An adaptable and multifaceted media expert, Gelobter went on to establish business operations for the launch of television streaming service Hulu. She also led the digital operation at Black Entertainment Television (BET) and served as Chief Digital Service Officer for the Department of Education, where she launched College Scorecard, an open data application programming interface (API) for comparing colleges. Today, Gelobter owns and manages tEQuitable, a digital ombudsman and forum for employees to discuss workplace issues. Meanwhile, video-streaming has become a billion-dollar industry, and it all started with Gelobter’s team.

 

Written by Majdulina Hamed.

Published to Nicholson News on February 4th, 2025.

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