Thursday, August 11, 2005

Unsung Heroes: Black Business Pioneers

It's not often that I find articles in Fortune magazine inspiring, but that's the right word for this story about some virtually unknown civil rights pioneers--six men who were among the first Black executives at leading US companies. The article, by Cora Daniels (which required nearly a year of research), is a powerful reminder of what Black Americans went through just a couple of generations ago: routine institutionalized discrimination, casual slights, and vicious abuse--like the KKK flyers distributed nationwide in 1962 when Harvey C. Russell became the first vice president of a Fortune 500 company: DON'T BUY PEPSI-COLA AND MAKE A NIGGER RICH.

The story is also an important reminder of some truths many Americans in the year 2005 find unpalatable:

1. Legal and social equality for all is not a long-standing American tradition. Just two generations ago, the majority of whites, North and South, opposed it, threw up roadblocks to it, and accepted it only under duress.

2. Government played, and plays, a vital role in ending discrimination. US corporations didn't start recruiting Black managers in the 1960s due to some change of heart or out of "political correctness." As Fortune notes,

It wasn't until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that a handful of black men began trickling into the executive suite. (Black women weren't represented in any numbers until well into the 1980s.)

One of the pioneers profiled in the article, James "Bud" Ward, had a stalled corporate career until the Civil Rights Act forced creation of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Ward leveraged the change into a job as a diversity consultant and eventually, having won the chance to demonstrate his business prowess, rose to senior VP at Marriott. If there'd never been a Civil Rights Act, Ward might have spent his whole career managing dinky motels in the South.

3. Whites didn't reject Blacks for corporate jobs because they lacked qualifications. When Bud Ward graduated from Cornell's hotel management school in 1952, his white classmates got numerous job offers from leading hotel chains. Ward got two offers--one from a small New Jersey restaurant and one from a hotel in Saudi Arabia. The other men profiled in the article were also highly credentialed. They had to outcompete less-well-qualified whites for years before being offered a chance at a top job.

4. The chief legacy of the 1960s is not moral decline, family breakdown, or social decay. It's the long-overdue recognition (by most Americans, at least) that our country had failed miserably at living up to its creed of freedom--and the determination to finally do something about it.

In the decades since then, we've painfully struggled to expand that understand to include other marginalized groups--women, Latinos, the handicapped, Indians, gays and lesbians. But the change started with a few brave Black pioneers in the sixties. And (dare I say it?) many of those who bewail the influence of that much-maligned decade do so because, in their heart of hearts, they're nostalgic for a time when they (or their families) were the "ins" and enjoyed the privilege of pissing on the "outs." That's the kind of "traditional values" too many Americans are still most comfortable with.

Thanks for the reminder, Fortune.
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