Read Online Certain People by Stephen; Birmingham - Free Book Online

You a Sex Symbol,” “When the Affair Is Over,” “Unmasking the (Married) Players,” and “Living In or Shacking Up,” MsTique is clearly intended as a black answer to Cosmopolitan , and Bettie Pullen-Walker has been referred to as a black Helen Gurley Brown. Mrs. Pullen-Walker, whose maiden name was Thompson (her hyphenated name combines the names of two previous husbands), is both a member of the black Old Guard and of the new achievers. She traces her ancestry back to Columbia, South Carolina, where, in the middle 1800s, her maternal great-grandmother inherited considerable property, which has remained in the family to this day. This great-grandmother married a man named Ben Frazier, a Muskogean Indian from Mississippi, and family legend has it that Ben Frazier’s ancestors were early Indian activists—moving across the plains attempting to frustrate the white man’s efforts to relocate all Indians to reservations and to induce them to give up all their tribal ties. Ben Frazier himself made a tidy fortune as a fur trader.
    Most of Bettie Pullen-Walker’s family have been educators, and it was as a teacher that she started out after graduating as a psychology major from Roosevelt University in 1964. In 1973, as a woman of some means, Mrs. Pullen-Walker decided to branch out, and MsTique was launched—complete with a Cosmopolitan -like cover girland centerfold (though not nude). It is probably too early to say how successful MsTique will eventually be, and it is still not running completely in the black. Mrs. Pullen-Walker blames this on advertiser—and advertising agency—indifference to “approximately fifteen million black females in this land,” and she complains of being “shoved around” by agency representatives. She says, “I have never experienced a more circular pattern of referrals, unkept promises, requests for marketing material that are not ever acknowledged, unreturned telephone calls, and a whole range of disrespectful and unbusinesslike behavior as I have had from agency representatives.”
    Her new venture, she points out, has been more than adequately publicized in the news media in general. But she claims that MsTique has been largely ignored by the black press because of the fierce competition for advertising. She also blames sexism. “Sexism is also rampant among black males, who dominate the black press,” she says.
    From this, one assumes she is talking about men like John Johnson.

III
    The Old Guard

5
    Family Trees
    George Johnson insists that his personal philosophy is based on two principles. “First, I believe in the Golden Rule,” he says. “It really works. It’s a great formula for success. Second, a man has got to believe in casting bread upon the waters. I’m more concerned, with what I give than with what I receive.” To put this theory to work, Johnson has established two foundations. One of these busies itself contributing funds to 290 different charitable organizations—black, nonblack, “and even Jewish”—on an annual basis. The second is dedicated to minority youth, primarily black, who want an education. “We have a hundred and twenty kids in school right now that we’re supporting,” Johnson says.
    Education has always provided the principal avenue out of the ghettos for all minority groups. But, Johnson feels, too many educated blacks have gone into teaching, or the clergy, or have become doctors or lawyers—where the opportunities to make money are limited. “There haven’t been too many blacks venturing into business ,” he says. “And that’s what my foundation’s for—poor black kids who can handle responsibilities and who want to make it in business . Because that’s the only way they’re going to make it—in business.” This is one reason why, he says, he put his new office building where it