Pressure Makes Diamonds
by Valerie Graves

“Pressure Makes Diamonds is an important and timely book that brilliantly details Valerie Graves’s pioneering life and transformative career in the historically segregated advertising industry. With world-class creative skills and gritty determination, Graves achieved award-winning mainstream success; opened doors for aspiring minorities; and helped to change how blacks were perceived in the media.”
—Byron E. Lewis, Chairman Emeritus, UniWorld Group

This is the unflinching memoir of a black woman’s journey from the projects of Motown-era Michigan to the skyscrapers of Madison Avenue and beyond. With marches, riots, and demonstrations as the backdrop, and rock ’n’ roll as a soundtrack, this book accompanies Graves as she traverses the seismically shifting terrain of 1960s and ’s70s America on her quest to “sbe somebody.”s

In the ’80s and ’90s, as Graves makes her ascent to the East Coast heights of the white male dominated advertising world, she turns familiarity with harsh realities like racism and sexism into robust insights that deeply connect with African American consumers. During the golden era of black advertising, she becomes an undisputed “somebody.” Soon, though, she learns that money, success, a good marriage, and connections that reach all the way to the White House cannot entirely insulate her against the social ills that threaten to crush black Americans.

Excerpt