"The Real Pepsi Challenge: Breaking the Color Barrier in American Business" Exhibition
Queens Museum of Art
This event has ended.
Years before the official Civil Rights Movement galvanized countless Americans, the Pepsi Corporation boldly took steps to integrate corporate America from as early as 1940. Based on Stephanie Capparell's groundbreaking book, THE REAL PEPSI CHALLENGE: The Inspirational Story of Breaking the Color Barrier in American Business, (Wall Street Journal Books/Free Press) this exhibit showcases the plight of the first African-Americans to hold professional corporate jobs in this country. Pepsi-Cola CEO Walter S. Mack headed the call of the black leadership of the day and hired an all-black sales team to sell his cola to American blacks. To pull the first sales team together—two men and a woman—for his then-fledgling business, he hired a black sales manager and invented the concept of the business internship as we know it today.
Media
Schedule
from May 17, 2008 to July 27, 2008