Mark Slater

Thesis title: A Necessary Relationship?: Big Tobacco Advertising and Black American Marketers Post-WW2

Biography

Background

I completed my Bachelors of Art in History at the University of Strathclyde in 2020. During my degree I developed strong research interests in both United States and Middle-Eastern history. For reasons still unknown to me, I opted to focus on the United States.

I went on to complete my Masters of Science in Historical Studies at Strathclyde again in 2022 where I graduated with distinction. My dissertation laid the framework for my doctoral thesis seeing me write on the history of American advertising throughout the 1960s.

Moving away from Strathclyde, I started my PhD at Edinburgh in 2023. My project has developed to look more specifically at American tobacco advertising and their interactions with Black American marketing and public relations experts.

My PhD is generously funded by the Fennell Doctoral Scholarship.

Qualifications

BA History, University of Strathclyde (2016-2022)

MSc Historical Studies, University of Strathclyde (2021-2022)

PhD History, University of Edinburgh (2023-Present)

Responsibilities & affiliations

History Guaranteed Hours Tutor Representative

History PGR Representative

Undergraduate teaching

I have previously tutored on the following courses within the School of History, Classics and Archeology: 

  • The Historian's Toolkit
  • Global connections since 1450
  • HCA Writing Centre

Research summary

My thesis sets out to analyse the relationship between advertising, Big Tobacco, and African Americans in the immediate post-World War 2 period through the 1980s. It assesses how, as white smokers began to abandon the habit of smoking, Big Tobacco advertising exploited the Black consumer, and images of Black culture, to attract more Black smokers. I am also interested in the politics of consumption, particularly in the context of Cold War capitalism. My research, more broadly, examines the politics of consumption through a novel lens, focusing on the complex, two-way relationship between Black Americans and the advertising industry, extending beyond the classic Civil Rights Era.

In particular, I consider how Black marketing and public relations experts were complicit in assisting Big Tobacco companies effectively target Black consumers, especially as the market grew substantially in the postwar era. I seek to assess if we should judge these experts for accepting tobacco money, and for working with Big Tobacco, when this money was often integral to sustaining their businesses. Particularly in a time where the health damages of tobacco were not as well know as they are today, their culpability is less clear cut. But as the damages of smoking became clearer amongst the general public, the relationship between Black advertisers and Big Tobacco endured.

Current research interests

United States History; Histories of Race; Politics of Consumption; History of Tobacco; Marketing; Print Culture

Current project grants

British Association for American Studies Research Assistance Award
Duke University's John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History Alvin A. Achenbaum Travel Grant

Papers delivered

'Moss Kendrix, R. J. Reynolds, and the Black Consumer: Cigarette Marketing in the United States Post-WW2,' University of Edinburgh, Scottish Association for the Study of America Conference, March 2025

'A Question of Necessity?: Big Tobacco and Philanthropy with the NAACP,' Edinburgh Centre for Global History Graduate Workshop, February 2025

'Big Tobacco and Blackness: Tobacco Advertising and the Exploitation of the Black Consumer Market c.1960-1980,' University of Edinburgh, Graduate Conference, May 2024; University of Edinburgh, Economic and Social History Conference, June 2024.

'Black is Beautiful, Black Power & Civil Rights: African Americans and Advertising in the 1960s and 1970s,' University of Stirling, Scottish Association for the Study of America Conference, March 2024; British Association for the Study of America PGR Roundtable (Online), April 2024.

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