UI professor looks at black Americans in advertising

When Jason Chambers tells his graduate students to keep an open mind on the topic for their doctoral dissertations, he isn't passing on a professorial platitude. He's speaking from experience.

The University of Illinois advertising professor and historian was bent on researching black American businesses for his doctorate at Ohio State, and figured to end up in a college history department, when a professor on his doctoral committee pushed him to take a course in consumer culture – what, how and why people buy and the like. He was none too excited about the class.

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