Features

AAPRC Weekly: Ofield Dukes

Ofield Dukes
Founder & President
Ofield Dukes & Associates
Washington DC

"Someone once said: the two main products of Washington are politics and public relations," notes veteran PR strategist Ofield Dukes. "They're inseparable. Nothing happens in this city without the involvement of politics and PR."

Dukes' long and venerable career in the Capitol City is, no doubt, a living example of that maxim. From a Detroit newspaper reporter to a White House press agent to the head of his own firm, Ofield Dukes has successfully mixed politics and PR for more than three decades. Along the way he has mentored students and emerging professionals and garnered the communications industry's highest awards, including, in 2001, the Public Relations Society of America's Gold Anvil Award, that organization's loftiest individual honor. He was the first African-American Golden Anvil recipient in the fifty-plus-year history of the organization.

Dukes has made exemplary "firsts" a habit.

After earning a journalism degree from Wayne State University in Detroit in l958, Dukes went on to capture three National Newspaper Publishers Association awards for editorial, column and feature writing at the Michigan Chronicle. In 1964, he was offered a position as deputy director of information for the President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity, and Dukes relocated to Washington to work with President Lyndon Johnson.

The next year, a columnist wrote that the two great white liberals in Washington at the time––Senator Robert Kennedy of New York and Vice President Hubert Humphrey––did not have any Negroes on their staff. "Senator Bob Kennedy went out the next week and hired Earl Graves to manage his Harlem staff," Dukes recalls. "And Hubert Humphrey, the Vice President, went on a nationwide search." Humphrey's search led him to a couple of White House insiders who hailed from Dukes' hometown, Detroit. Both gave Dukes a resounding recommendation and the next thing Dukes knew his former girlfriends were calling to find out why the FBI was around asking questions about him.

As Humphrey's associate press secretary, Dukes––one of the few African-Americans to hold such a position––spent three years dealing with the mainstream national and international media and travelling throughout the world with Humphrey––whom Dukes describes as "more humanitarian than politician." Dukes' experiences in the White House lit a fire under his commitment to a career in communications. "During that time I was exposed to one of America's greatest communicators as a President––Lyndon Baines Johnson," Dukes says. "It was a hip type of communications, a strategic thinking. It was political communication; it was how to relate to all kinds of people. He was a modern-day Dale Carnegie in terms of dealing with the psychology of people."

Dukes' ideas about the importance of effective communications are a guiding philosophy for what became his life's work. "Public relations is synonymous with human communication," says Dukes. "Even Jesus Christ was involved in communications. He had the disciples as advance persons and John the Baptist was sort of a PR agent…Any form of human communication involves the principles of public relations––how to relate to people based on their interests. Public relations is more than just promoting an event or just engaging in an outpouring of publicity."

In addition to his deeply held beliefs about the importance of communications, Dukes is, perhaps, a classic overachiever. "When I first entered the public relations business I got up every morning with an intense determination to be excellent," Dukes remembers. "It was very, very difficult because in 1969, when I entered the PR business, it was not necessarily a mainstream profession. Here in Washington, journalists were calling PR people hacks and flacks."

Despite the name-calling, post-White House, Dukes started Ofield Dukes & Associates with an office in the National Press Building. He was the only African-American operating a PR operation downtown. "I just had a part-time secretary and Motown was the first client," Dukes recounts. "We didn't have fax machines and email and sometimes checks came in late." There were times when Dukes didn't have 50 cents to catch the bus from Southwest Washington to the Press Building, so he walked. An earnest Dukes was confident in his ability to survive the limited funds and transient clients, though, and developed ideas early on about integrity. "I felt very strongly that you had to live on the basis of your reputation," he says.

One of the greatest tests of that tenet came in the early 1970s. On one of those days when he couldn't swing the 50 cents bus fare, he got a call from a government official in South Africa. "It was a very lucrative offer to try and spin South Africa, and spin its system of apartheid," Dukes recounts. "I was appalled and offended that the person even suggested it. My commitment in business was to never do anything to compromise my sense of integrity––not even for 30 pieces of silver."

Ofield Dukes & Associates survived the lean times, and in 1975 the Washington Post described Dukes as one of the top six persuaders in Washington. His skill and reputation brought him in contact with the era's history-makers. He was involved in helping organize the first Congressional Black Caucus dinner. He was an advisor to Dr. Leon Sullivan in his fight against apartheid in South Africa. He served on Coretta Scott King's board for 10 years––during the time that Henry Ford gave her $10 million to build a center. Stevie Wonder asked Dukes to coordinate the first march to make Dr. King's birthday a national holiday. In the 1970s, Dukes was one of only a handful of African American members of the National Association of Theatrical Managers and Press Agents, and promoted the Washington run of Broadway shows such as "Bubbling Brown Sugar," "Pearlie Victorious" and "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf."

Today the Ofield Dukes & Associates' client list includes: the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturing Association, and the Congressional Black Caucus. Dukes is also working with the Treasury and Federal Reserve Board on a new $50 bill that will combat counterfeiting. He is a sought after political consultant, advising the likes of New York Congressman Charlie Rangel and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus. He has been a democratic communication consultant to every democratic Presidential campaign since 1972.

In 2004, Ofield Dukes & Associates is celebrating its 35th year, a milestone worthy of retrospection and, certainly, a well-earned pat on the back. But resting on laurels isn't Dukes' style. "I've been blessed that business has been good and I don't think my reputation has ever been tarnished," says Dukes. "[But] I still get up every morning with a strong passion to be excellent and not to live on the reputation of what I did yesterday or last year. I don't need to prove anything to anybody, but there's just a determination within to be the best I can be everyday."

In addition to building Ofield Dukes & Associates, Dukes has also been committed to educating and mentoring young people. In 1971, he began teaching at Howard University. "We've taught more African-American students and encouraged more to go into PR than anybody else in the country," Dukes says proudly.

After 14 years in the National Press Building with a full-time staff of 12, Dukes decided it was time to streamline. These days he runs a lean and efficient operation out of his townhouse in Southwest Washington. With a core staff of just three, he hires people throughout the country and throughout the world as he needs them. A strong believer in time management, Dukes' days are well-organized. He's at his desk for eight a.m. and wraps things up between five and six p.m., wasting no time in between. He places great stock in being well organized, and sees it as key to the success of Ofield Dukes & Associates. It is the one habit he staunchly recommends for PR professionals hoping to start their own firms. "The individual would have to be meticulously and methodically organized," says Dukes. "And the key is time management. Time is money. I've always believed in that."

Time management has also played an important role in helping Dukes maintain a healthy balance between his personal and professional lives. A divorced father, Duke raised his daughter, Roxi, full-time from her middle-school years onward. Today, he is proudly looking forward to her graduation from Howard University in May and says being a good parent always took the priority over business.

Dukes, who was born in Alabama and raised in Detroit, has three sisters and a slew of nieces and nephews. He's been an avid tennis player for the last 25 years and a devoted churchgoer, spending his Sundays at Washington's Metropolitan Baptist Church. "I feel that my religious faith in God is the underpinning of my life and my success," says Dukes. "I treat everybody as I would want to be treated; the Golden Rule is the philosophical centerpiece of my life."

Message Ofield Dukes and the AAPRC and tell them what you think

AAPRC's Mission
The African-American Public Relations Collective (AAPRC) is an assemblage of professionals who provide communication conduits among clients, journalists, media and our communities. We come together as a collective because we recognize the importance of building those same conduits amongst ourselves.

A great deal of what we do is professional development––updating our skills, keeping pace with technology, refining and streamlining processes, providing a forum to tackle the issues that impact our work environment––but we believe our professional lives benefit most from the forging of effective alliances. Connected to one another, we possess the power of a nationwide body of committed, knowledgeable practitioners with an eye on the future.

As we move into the 21st century at lightning speed, mass media and its potent messages occupy an ever-larger part of our daily lives and our collective psyche. The AAPRC is focused on helping our members gain a deeper understanding of media's force and supporting their growth as powerful participants in the global communications network.

AAPRC's Contact
GQ Media & Public Relations
1650 Broadway Suite 1011
New York NY 10019
1212 765 7910
1212 765 7905
aapublicistcoll@aol.com