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D. Parke Gibson buried

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[[caption]] D. PARKE GIBSON [[/caption]]

Funeral services for D. Parke Gibson, president of one of the country's leading Black-owned management consulting firms, were held Wednesday at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, 132 West 138th Street.

Burial followed at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.

Gibson, 48, suffered a heart attack last Saturday night shortly before leaving his office at 475 Fifth Avenue. He was rushed to New York Hospital where he was pronounced dead at 11:25 p.m.

The Gibson family had requested that instead of flowers contributions be made to the D. Parke Gibson Educational Memorial Fund, 475 Fifth Avenue, Suite 1600, New York, N.Y. 10017.

As president of the D. Parke Gibson International, Inc., Gibson developed a successful public relations and marketing consulting organization over the last [[text cut off]] years. Before he settled in this city, Gibson was a partner with Laws/Gibson Public Relations in Philadelphia, and worked both for the Johnson Publishing Co., [[text cut off]] the Chicago Defender.

He was author of two books on the purchasing power of the Black consumer. His latest, released last year, was "$70 Billion in the Black." His earlier book was "The $30 Billion Negro."

In addition, he was publisher of The Gibson Report, a monthly publication on marketing and communications with minority consumer groups, and Race Relations and Industry, a monthly look at industrial race relation practices.

He was a member of the board of directors of the Intra-America Life Insurance Co., Colonial Penn group, an[[text cut off]] member of the American Marketing [[text cut off]]ciation, the Counselors Section o[[text cut off]] Public Relations Society of Americ[[text cut off]] the National Association of Market [[text cut off]]opers.

In the last few months since pub[[text cut off]] of his latest book, Gibson was a f[[text cut off]] speaker around the nation discus[[text cut off]] buying practices of minority con[[text cut off]]

On one of his speaking tours re[[text cut off]] Greensboro, N.C. he told the [[text cut off]] Triad Advertising Federation th[[text cut off]] income is up and outmigration from the South has ended and th[[text cut off]] population continues to grow [[text cut off]] the white."

Born in Seattle, Washingto[[text cut off]] City College of New York. [[text cut off]] was awarded an honorary de[[text cut off]] of Humane Letters from [[text cut off]] College in South Carolina.

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The late Parke Gibson tried to bridge the hiatus between blacks and big companies

To the Editor: The premature death of D. Parke Gibson (AA, May 21, P. 98) should not go unremarked.

If we lived in a different kind of society, one not afflicted by racism, Parke Gibson may have had a different career. He may have had a shot at the Mobil board, where another public affairs person, Herb Schmertz, now sits. Or perhaps he would have been able to make it to the board of a company like Quaker Oats, as another public affairs person, Bob Thurston, has. 

But when Parke set out to look for gainful employment some 25 years ago, there were no jobs for black people in the communications business. So he eked out a career for himself by serving as a bridge between the black community and those benighted companies which wouldn't hire him.

He turned out in the end to be an educator of those white companies. He told them blacks were different. They stared at him blankly. He explained, patiently, that one of the reasons blacks are different is that they grow up with a heritage of lethal discrimination.

Over and over again he had to face the know-it-all with an MBA from Harvard who didn't see why the black audience couldn't be reached with the same commercial beamed at the white audience. In his book, "$70 Billion in the Black," published by Macmillan last year, Parke gave this succinct answer: "As long as the dual society exists in America, it will be necessary to program to dual markets."

His counsel will be missed by many of us.

Milton Moskowitz 
Mill Valley, Cal.


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