50 years of progress in corporate America

While Blacks fought for their civil rights with protests, demonstrations and legal petitions during the '50s and '60s, some of these same Black men, and later women, were waging their own battles in corporate America. Little by little, the doors were pried open and Blacks got coveted white-collar jobs and later were promoted to management positions. As a consequence, there have been dramatic changes in the number of Blacks in the executive suites of the nation's largest corporations.

For a number of reasons, this process has accelerated during Ebony's golden anniversary. Several months ago, for example, Kenneth I. Chenault, 43, was named vice chairman of the $94 billion American Express Co. He joins the chairman/CEO, president and another vice chairman as a member of the Office of Chief Executive. Many predict that Chenault, who joined American Express in 1981 as director of strategic planning, will one day be the company's chairman.

In another historic appointment, Richard D. Parsons became president of Time-Warner Inc., the $6.6 billion company that is the world's largest communications empire. In addition, 45-year-old Warren E. Shaw recently became the chief executive officer of Chancellor Capital Management, which manages $28 billion in client assets. And Robert Holland Jr., a businessman and chairman of the board of trustees at Spelman College, was named chief executive officer of Ben Jerry's Homemade Inc., the $150 million ice cream company.

As Black executives moved into the mainstream of corporate America, other African-Americans made major inroads as CEOs of their own companies. In 1982, John H. Johnson, publisher and chairman of a conglomerate that includes EBONY, jet magazine and Fashion Fair Cosmetics, the largest Black-owned cosmetics company in the world, was cited on "The Forbes Four Hundred" list of the wealthiest Americans. In 1971, Johnson Products Co., under the leadership of founder George Johnson (no relation to John H. Johnson), became the first Black-owned firm to be listed on the American Stock Exchange.

Another major development of the period was the emergence of Black owners and part-owners of corporations with predominantly White clientele. Reginald F. Lewis, for example, in 1987 created a billion-dollar corporation, TLC Beatrice International, by acquiring Beatrice International Food Co. for $985 million in what was the largest offshore leveraged buyout ever undertaken. The company was a global giant with 64 companies in 31 countries. The deal put Lewis' TLC Group into Wall Street's big league. As head of TLC Beatrice International, which operates only in Europe, Lewis became one of America wealthiest men and was cited on "The Forbes Four Hundred" list of richest Americans in 1991.

In his autobiography, Why Should White Guys Have All The Fun?, Lewis said that some writers have tried to play down the noteworthy achievements of African-Americans. But, he said, you "can chronicle the achievements of African-Americans in so many different areas whenever the barriers have been broken. Look at the arts, certainly in athletics--even in business."

He went on to say that in "my own career, a person of very modest means has been able -- by dint of his own efforts -- to achieve great wealth and financial independence, which therefore suggests that some progress clearly has been made. But in my view, it is all too little when we consider the day-to-day drama being inflicted upon many of our children who are of African or Hispanic descent and who are not yet fully included in the American Dream."

Even before the Beatrice International deal, Lewis, a graduate of Harvard Law School, had found success as a corporate lawyer and financier. He bought McCall Pattern Co. in 1984 for $22.5 million, guided it to record earnings and sold it in 1987 for $65 million. Because TLC kept real estate worth $6-to-$10 million, and also had gotten other dividends, Lewis said he earned about $90 million on his original investment of $1 million. lewis died in january 1993 of brain cancer at age 50. His wife, Loida Nicolas Lewis, is now chairman of the company.

When EBONY was founded in November 1945, there were only a handful of million-dollar Black businesses, and no executives at Fortune 500 companies. In fact, there were few if any Black employees, including secretaries, on the executive level in White companies. This situation slowly changed in the late '40s and early '50s, primarily because of the NAACP's legal campaign, the revolution of rising expectations following World War 11, and the pioneering work of a number of individuals and organizations, including National Urban League directors Lester Granger, Whitney Young and Vernon Jordan.

A major factor in the emerging Black economic thrust, which paralleled and reflected the Black civil rights thrust, was the founding of EBONY and the emergence of economic specialists such as Publisher Johnson, who virtually invented the Black consumer market.

In 1947, for example, he pointed out in EBONY's Backstage column that "big advertisers of consumer items fail to recognize the immensity of the Negro market, which far exceeds Canada's total imports from the U.S." From the '40s on through the '60s, he waged a campaign to inform major corporations about the buying power of Black America, and to encourage them to advertise in Black publications as well as to hire Black salesmen and market specialists.