A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Waste — you know the phrase, you’ve heard it.
That’s because the iconic slogan, dreamt up by the advertising agency Young & Rubicam goes back more than four decades. It was meant to promote the United Negro College Fund scholarship program for black students. The slogan practically part of the national consciousness, like Have a Coke and a smile.
The early ads looked a lot like this:
OK, so they weren’t always this trippy or heavy-handed. But that was the general tone. Actors dramatized just how stark reality was for the kids who received UNCF scholarships. The education of black kids was framed as an issue of social justice in urgent-sounding voice-overs by the likes of Ossie Davis and Samuel L. Jackson. More than half the kids who receive scholarship money from the UNCF are the first in their families to attend college, and most come from families with incomes of less than $25,000 a year
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article courtesy of BCNN1.com
