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Barbara Gardner Proctor, Trailblazing Ad Woman, Dies at 85

In 1963, Barbara Gardener Proctor was flying to Europe to swap records while working for a black-owned record company. Upon her arrival back home, Vee-Jay records started publicizing her find. Soon, โ€œEnglandโ€™s No.1 Vocal Group,โ€ the Beatles, would be everywhere. Suggested Reading Flint’s Water Crisis Ends With A Major Development Songs by White Artists You…

In 1963, Barbara Gardener Proctor was flying to Europe to swap records while working for a black-owned record company. Upon her arrival back home, Vee-Jay records started publicizing her find. Soon, โ€œEnglandโ€™s No.1 Vocal Group,โ€ the Beatles, would be everywhere.

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Proctor, a trailblazing businesswoman and community activist, died on Dec. 19, according to her son Morgan. She was 85.

Born to a 16-year-old single mother in North Carolina, Proctor was raised in a dirt-floor shack by her grandparents before earning a teacherโ€™s certificate from Talladega College in Alabama. After a detour in Chicago left her penniless, Proctor stuck around.

Beyond her early contributions to radio airwaves, Proctor founded the first ad agency founded by a black woman. After securing a $1,000 loan from a friend and office space above a Pizzeria Uno, her clientele grew to include Kraft foods. By the 1980s, sheโ€™d risen to national prominence with the help of a mention from Ronald Reagan during his 1983 State of the Union speech. The โ€œrose from a ghetto shackโ€ who went on to โ€œbuild a multi-million-dollar advertising agency in Chicagoโ€ would see her firm, Proctor and Gardner, dissolved by 1995. Still, her firmโ€™s end was due in large part to competition from other black-owned firms, a space her handiwork had created.

Five years earlier, Proctor reflected on her trailblazer status.

โ€œIt is not, in any way, easy to be a minority company,โ€ Proctor said, โ€œand as I am a woman and black, it has been a double minority situation.โ€

Straight From The Root

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