The Wayfarer Spring 1965 by [African Americana]. [Automobiles] - 1965

Philadelphia: Joseph V. Baker Associates, Inc. on behalf of Chrysler Motors Corporation, 1965. Very good.. 16pp., profusely illustrated. Original pictorial wrappers, stapled. Minor soiling and wear. Inked calculation along side of back cover. A rare issue of an uncommon midcentury periodical devoted to African-American automobile ownership. The publisher, Joseph Varney Baker (1908-1993) was the first African American to own a public relations business when he started one in 1934. His client list included Chrysler and several other major corporations such as American Tobacco Company, DuPont, Gillette, NBC, Pennsylvania Railroad, Procter & Gamble, RCA, Scott Paper, U.S. Steel, and Western Union. All of the advertising in this magazine is for various cars manufactured by Chrysler (Imperial, Chrysler, Dodge and Plymouth). The Wayfarer was aimed at African-American car buyers or owners. It was apparently published quarterly, beginning in 1964, though institutional records are so rare and extant literature so scant on the publication that we don't know when it ended (Danky indicates issues through 1969). According to Danky, each issue of the magazine covered the Black community in a different city; the present issue focuses on Boston. The racial situation in Boston is described vaguely and benignly even though Boston was then embroiled in epic controversy over demands to bus African-American public school children in an effort to solve de facto segregation of the city's public schools. Louise Day Hicks, the vocal white leader of the city's uncompromising opposition to busing, became so popular that she almost got elected mayor of Boston in 1967. OCLC records very few holdings institutionally, with no specific notation of the present issue held by anyone. An interesting and rarely encountered entry in the history of the mobility of African Americans in 20th-century America.
Danky 6322.