Word: first
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...with a Virginia political trailblazer named Douglas Wilder. Back in 1975, when Wilder was the only black in the state senate (and the first since 1890), he gave voice to his overarching aspirations, a notion of empowerment far beyond what seemed plausible amid the genteel conservatism of the Old Dominion. "If people will elect you Lieutenant Governor," Wilder predicted with startling prescience, "they'll elect you Governor. I would think it would be an interesting test somewhere along the line for a black to run for one of those positions so as to put prejudice right on the line...
Fourteen years later, election night 1989, Wilder himself provided Virginia voters -- and, by implication, the nation as a whole -- with the most ambitious referendum on black political progress since Jesse Jackson first dabbled in presidential primaries. With Wilder, the grandson of slaves, battling to become the nation's first elected black Governor, it seemed almost commonplace that black mayoral candidates from Seattle to New York City were winning their own landmark races...
Virginia has always been in the forefront of racial change. It was at Jamestown in 1619 that the first shipload of captive Africans later destined for slavery disembarked. It was at Appomattox in 1865 that the Confederacy surrendered. It was in Virginia in the 1950s that men who fancied themselves learned penned some of the last erudite-sounding but morally bankrupt justifications for segregation. And it will be in Richmond on Jan. 13 that there will be a black hand on the Bible when Lawrence Douglas Wilder is sworn in as Virginia's 73rd Governor. It is not only...
...judges looked for ads that broke new ground. The Ally & Gargano agency's Federal Express ad shattered taboos against making fun of the customer. One runner-up, adman Hal Riney's first Bartles & Jaymes wine-cooler commercial, scored with tongue-in-cheek humility. Another winner, Wendy's 1984 "Where's the Beef?" slogan, created by Dancer-Fitzgerald-Sample, became a political zinger in the hands of Walter Mondale. But as the 1984 election proved, even advertising has its limits...
...Sure enough, that ritual is now headed the way of the penny postcard. Last week the U.S. Postal Service introduced EXTRAordinary Stamps, a line of peel-and-stick, self-adhesive postage stamps billed as "the most thoroughly researched and tested issue in U.S. stamp history." The new 25 cents first-class stamps will be test-marketed for 30 days in Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Dallas, Minneapolis and ten other cities. One possible sticking point for consumers: a booklet of 18 first-class stamps is priced at $5, which includes a 50 cents markup to cover the cost...