BLACK WOMAN WHO FOUGHT FOR BUSINESS TELLS HOW TO SURVIVE

Inez Kaiser is a person of many firsts.

As an African-American woman, she is the first to open a public relations firm in the United States, the first to coordinate a conference on women in business, the first to be inducted into the National Hall of Fame of Women in Public Relations and the first to work as a consultant for several national companies.

The list goes on.

Kaiser -- the president of Kansas City-based Kaiser & Associates, a public relations, advertising, marketing and management consulting firm -- was in Cape Girardeau Monday to deliver the second annual Michael Davis lecture at Southeast Missouri State University.

The lecture, which is a part of the university's recognition of Black History Month, was established in memory of Michael Davis, a journalism student at the university who died in 1994 as a result of a hazing ritual.

Dr. Ferrell Ervin, chairman of the university's mass communication department, said Monday that the whole focus of the lecture series was to bring outstanding role models to campus to talk about their professional experience and to help the campus community realize how mass communication impacts life.

Kaiser, who began her professional career as an elementary schoolteacher in Kansas City, Kan., in 1941, became disillusioned with teaching when she realized that there was little, if any, chance for advancement for black women.

During a leave of absence from her teaching duties, she read Napolean Hill's book "Think and Grow Rich." One sentence from the book became the motto of Kaiser's life.

"Whatever the mind believes and conceives it can achieve," she quotes.

She began free-lance writing and started a small, public relations business from her home while she continued teaching in the Kansas City School District. When she tried to relocate her company in the heart of the downtown Kansas City business district, people discouraged her. They told her that she should open up at 18th and Vine, a predominantly black section of town.

The Kansas City Chamber of Commerce was also not very welcoming, Kaiser recounts.

"The Chamber of Commerce bylaws at the time said the membership was open to white males only," she said.

Because of her perseverance in the face of sometimes overwhelming opposition, Kaiser's firm became one of the most successful public relations firms in the city, working nationally with companies such as 7-Up, Sterling Drug, Sears, Lever Brothers and Pillsbury.

Her influence went beyond the private sector as she became a consultant to the chairman of the Equal Opportunity Commission and the coordinator of the Department of Commerce's first conference for women in business.

She even became an Adviser to Presidents Nixon and Ford on issues related to women and minorities in business.

"Nixon did more for black business people than any other president," she said.

Key to her success was learning how the system works and how to make political connections, she said.

"You must be political," she told a mass communications class Monday morning. "You don't have to like politics, but you must be political."

It was an important lesson for her to learn, working as a Republican in a heavily Democratic community, she said.

As she rehearsed Monday night's speech, titled "Plan Now, Profit Later," she said people must learn to work together and for each other if they are to survive on this planet.

"We've made some progress, but we have a long way to go," she said.