CHAPTER 4

BLACK AMERICANS IN WHITE COLLARS

“I wanna be somebody so bad. But something is holding me back. Is it because I’m black?”

—Syl Johnson, “Is It Because I’m Black?” 1969¹

In 1956, Charles “Chuck” Harrison began searching for an industrial design career in Chicago. Armed with a bachelor’s degree from the Art Institute of Chicago and a master’s from the Illinois Institute of Technology, the Louisiana-born African American heard from a friend that a firm was hiring, but when Harrison showed up the next day they suddenly no longer needed help. “It seemed I was the answer to everyone’s employment shortage problems!” he recalled. Former college classmates working at the venerable Chicago retailer Sears, Roebuck & Co. urged him to apply for an opening. The department manager, Carl Bjorncrantz, had a liberal reputation, and Harrison filled out the application and took a battery of personnel tests. On his next visit, however, Bjorncrantz regretfully informed him, “Chuck, I have to tell you. It turns out I can’t hire you. I know you need an explanation and I’m going to tell it like it is: Sears has an unwritten policy against hiring black people.” Harrison admired his rare frankness, and Bjorncrantz, who later became a friend, assisted Harrison in finding freelance jobs. Smaller design firms hired him, but the pay was low and benefits scarce. Harrison’s reputation grew, and word spread that he was an agreeable coworker who, in his words, “didn’t bite anybody.” In 1961, Bjorncrantz called back. “Well Chuck, we can hire you now.” Harrison accepted, becoming the first black in a white-collar position at the company.²

Though Harrison had “arrived” by breaking the race barrier at Sears, in many ways his struggles had just begun. In the 1960s and 1970s black Americans initiated changes in employment practices. Blacks pressed forward into previously lily-white workplaces, forcing often-reluctant white coworkers and supervisors to accept them. For African Americans to make structural changes, though, activists argued that they needed to integrate the corporate workplace at all levels. This push was not just about giving deserving applicants opportunities, but fostering a class of decision makers in Chicago that could elevate the race. This was a tall order, putting an added layer of responsibility on individuals straining for acceptance.

Scholars have generally examined the push against employment discrimination from the perspective of government initiatives and the reactions of corporations, thus minimizing the role played by the primary actors.³ Revisionist historians maintain that corporations were much more liberal on racial matters than they have been given credit for and played a leading role in opening the American workplace to minorities. By the mid-1980s, one historian argues, large corporations were “affirmative action’s most credible champions” and “a real and powerful force for racial progress in the United States.”⁴ Perhaps some corporations fit this description, but most were reluctant and moved sluggishly. Many integrated only after the urban uprisings and government pressure compelled them, and they generally viewed black managers as nominal hires.

Though minorities could not have entered the corporate world without the help of some enlightened white gatekeepers, it was the trailblazers who shouldered the burden. The focus on governmental and corporate policy changes obscures how blacks were not only the most reliable “champions” of affirmative action, they were also the instigators. With the exceptions of a select few progressive corporations, big businesses either rejected equal opportunity or tried to evade it. Even when company leaders agreed to make hiring minorities a priority, junior executives and supervisors were often stubbornly resistant to change.⁵ Getting hired meant that the battles had just begun, as black personnel were routinely shunted into marginal careers, denied promotions, and viewed as the products of unearned privilege by resentful white colleagues.

The changes wrought by civil rights initiatives also accelerated intraracial turmoil present since the First Great Migration. Class tensions were heightened during the 1960s and 1970s as civil rights groups hoped that blacks in corporations could make changes to bring more equity to the African American community, while also fretting that the successful would abandon the less affluent.⁶ Black managers struggled to make their ranks more inclusive, but could only watch as Chicago’s industrial sector declined dramatically, hitting black manual workers especially hard.⁷ There was no singular attitude or experience for black white-collar workers; some saw themselves as a part of the civil rights movement, while others wanted to deemphasize race and focus on their careers. Many did appeal for collective black actions to counter white racism and privilege, but black pioneers had to tread lightly as they negotiated frequently hostile workplaces while dealing with issues of racial authenticity, personal stress, and the costs of “the good life.” Though black radicals and nationalists often dismissed the blacks in white collars as privileged and pampered, in truth theirs was a long, hard road.

WHITE COLLARS FOR WHITES ONLY

The opening of the corporate workplace was a crucial breakthrough for African Americans. White-collar work in America was largely a white preserve, especially in the private sector. While government agencies and the media generally focused on the blatant racism of craft unions, professional discrimination was more indirect. In 1957, the black magazine Color reported that the Department of Labor’s Dictionary of Occupational Titles listed seventeen thousand jobs, but African Americans could realistically aspire to fill about one hundred of these. Headlines in the black press such as “Employs Negro on White Collar Job” testified to the rarity of an African American in a salaried station. While blacks in the white-collar workforce grew by 87 percent in the 1950s, by 1960 they still only made up 3.7 percent of these positions. This near exclusion became even more calamitous as the country gradually shifted to a service-sector economy. Careers in the professions, management, clerical work, and sales accounted for 97 percent of the total increase in employment from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s.⁸ Throughout the civil rights decades, black leaders grasped that they must break through in corporate America, or “remain peripheral.”⁹

In Chicago, white-collar job orders had traditionally been marked as “restricted” to indicate that they were white-only. While this practice dissipated in the post–World War II era, in 1953 at least 20 percent of corporate employment requests explicitly excluded blacks. When the Chicago Defender surveyed the hiring practices of Chicago’s downtown shopping stores that year, it uncovered clear prejudice. A State Street store manager stated, “You can’t jam this [integration] business down people’s throats,” but “maybe in another generation” employment procedures would change. Another manager earnestly asked if there was a way to keep Negroes in the South from coming to Chicago.¹⁰ In 1959 the director of the Chicago Commission on Human Relations stated that businesses “maintain a closed door policy” for blacks in management, and a year later Chicago employment bureaus reported that 98 percent of white-collar job orders excluded African Americans.¹¹ Even as migrants continued to stream north, in 1964 Business Week branded the city “a laggard in providing job opportunity for the Negro,” as a “miniscule” number attained salaried status.¹²

Education was supposed to be the ticket to success in America, but for black Americans high school and college degrees usually did not translate into befitting careers. Famed Chicago companies were notorious for using college-educated blacks as elevator operators or shoe shiners. Those applying for better positions were either bluntly denied, or more polite personnel managers gave them the “run around.”¹³ In 1947, Robert Span Browne graduated with a coveted Master’s in Business Administration from the University of Chicago and began what he called the “traumatic experience” of job hunting. He received not a single interview.¹⁴ Browne returned to Chicago after a stint in Houston, where he did a “daily battle with racism,” including an arrest stemming from an altercation after a police officer addressed him as “boy.” He landed a research position with the Chicago Urban League and organized a campaign to get banks to hire blacks. “Obviously,” he recalled, “this was a personal vendetta from my days at the University of Chicago.” He got an interview with the chair of First National Bank, who said that though he refused to hire African Americans, he did support the Urban League by donating his used carpeting to them. Browne drove home “nearly in tears,” feeling “demeaned.”¹⁵

Many white decision makers held that blacks could not supervise whites, arguing that whites would chafe at the subversion of the racial hierarchy and that African Americans were deficient in leadership and managerial qualities. The stereotype held African Americans back from achieving positions ranging from foreman to football quarterback.¹⁶ Albert Miller hit the job market with degrees in political science and sociology. An encyclopedia firm hired him over the phone and told him to come in to discuss salary, but Miller felt it necessary to inform the personnel manager that he was black. The manager responded that while he was not prejudiced, Miller would be supervising whites, and he would have to check with his bosses. The next day Miller could not reach the manager, and no one at the firm could find him. “I often wonder what goes on in the mind of a prospective white employer who refuses to hire me because I am a Negro,” Miller related. “I often wonder whether or not he thinks about me as human.”¹⁷ For African Americans, educational achievements frequently led to profound disappointments.

SMALL VICTORIES

Black Americans began a concerted push for a fair share of salaried careers soon after the end of World War II. In the late 1950s Chicagoans turned to an old tactic to specifically target racial barriers in the higher-paying ranks. The Negro Labor Relations League, an assertive organization that successfully led local “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” boycotts in the 1930s, reemerged to demand careers in Chicago banks. Many industries maintained a color line, but banking was among the most stringent. In 1960, blacks made up less than 1 percent of banks’ labor force nationally. After picketing brought early victories, the emboldened League set a deadline of thirty days for seventeen Chicago area banks to consider black applications or face demonstrations. Several firms caved after the League distributed two hundred thousand pieces of literature, sent five thousand letters, and used a sound truck to broadcast their demands. Gradually, activists in Chicago and nationwide made these “Don’t Save Where You Can’t Earn” and similar boycotts effective, as managers of banks and retail stores openly expressed fears of protests. In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson responded by prohibiting banks from handling federal funds if they discriminated in employment. By 1969, blacks made up 6 percent of employees in the nation’s 1,700 largest banks.¹⁸

Chicago civil rights groups kept up the pressure. In Chatham, the CAPCC demanded that the local bank either hire African Americans or black residents would withdraw their accounts en masse. The Chicago Commission on Human Relations assisted in placing white-collar blacks at nine firms in 1963, and a year later Edwin Berry of the Chicago Urban League boasted that the demands had translated into opportunities for the educated at the foremost banks, with inroads in insurance and advertising. “We have noted that almost every major firm in Chicago is asking for some talented and skilled Negroes,” Berry noted. “The young, well-trained Negro now has a chance to get into the mainstream of American economic life.”¹⁹

The yawning racial gap in unemployment rates caught attention, yet black leaders also underscored the shoddy treatment afforded to the educated and skilled. In 1959, the median income of white male college graduates exceeded that of their nonwhite peers by an astounding 81 percent.²⁰ Calls for educational equality were pointless if the rewards for degrees were menial positions. Despite a swelling black middle class, a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee activist in Chicago charged that “no Negro mother in Chicago can guarantee that her daughter will not grow up to scrub Miss Ann’s toilet bowl.”²¹ In one city after another, black groups insisted that they sought not just jobs, but careers for African Americans.²² The problem was not just unemployment, Chicago labor activist Addie Wyatt stated, but “underemployment and underpayment. There is systematic exploitation of dark people. No matter how many Ph.D.’s a person may have, he is still exploited because he cannot get rid of the ‘D’ for ‘Dark.’”²³

These posts meant more than a salary boost; they conferred dignity. In a short story by Chicago author Cyrus Colter, the protagonist is proud that he “wore a necktie on the job, and made his inventory rounds with a ball-point pen and clipboard.” His clerical position paid less than the Chicago steel mills, “but that kind of work was no good, undignified; coming home on the bus you were always so tired you went to sleep in your seat, with your lunch pail in your lap.”²⁴ A twenty-five-year-old migrant from Mississippi with a fourth-grade education arrived in Chicago in 1953 and landed decent work as a hod carrier. For his son, though, he wanted “a clean job, to work in an office, to wear a clean shirt every day, and to be able to clean up a little after work so that he didn’t have to ride home on the bus dirty and smelly.”²⁵ Black protests over access to careers and education parity were not just about gaining immediate access, but securing intergenerational mobility. The white collar symbolized the triumph over relegation to backbreaking work.²⁶

Blacks widely shared a desire for upward mobility into the white-collar ranks, but most instead realized that their lot in Chicago was not improving. Tensions festered as Chicago’s political and economic power structure ignored black calls for inclusion. The riots of the 1960s were a visceral expression of ghetto dwellers’ infuriation with how the city’s veneer of liberalism veiled plantation politics, inhabitable living conditions, police brutality, and economic stagnation.²⁷ On the West Side, industrial jobs fled to the suburbs alongside white residents, leaving black residents confined in areas beset by unemployment and dissatisfaction. The West Side experienced racial conflagrations in 1965 and 1966, and the frustration culminated with a major disturbance after the death of Martin Luther King in 1968.²⁸ Meanwhile, the South Side remained relatively calm, in part because it was home to many of those finally getting a taste of integrated workplaces, better living, and political clout.

Chicago’s business and political leaders responded to the uprisings by furthering the integration of upwardly mobile blacks. Company executives formed the Chicago Merit Employee Committee and claimed that equal opportunities in employment would be the decisive factor in stemming future riots.²⁹ The disturbances showed that Chicago needed an expansive desegregation plan and that ghetto areas required large and immediate structural investments. Instead, white elites wanted an empowered black middle class to, as one jaded observer noted, “discipline its unruly elements.”³⁰

By looking to the middle class to quell the unrest, whites badly underestimated the depth of support for radical measures. Glidden manager Percy Julian dressed down as an “ordinary Negro” to comprehend the anger bubbling up in ghetto areas. He noted that “stable” blacks were caught in the “web of bitterness” and listening to militant voices. “Painfully,” he admitted, “I realized that there is a bit of Stokely Carmichael in nearly every American Negro, even in me.”³¹ Middle-class African Americans did not participate in the riots, but they often endorsed the sentiments. Many were no longer just comfortable attaining a degree of affluence and becoming an invisible buffer between the black poor and whites.³² A black executive at Northern Illinois Gas got into a heated exchange with his boss over the riots, nearly souring their relationship. “But he had the problem, not me. Things eventually calmed down, and we ended up with a newer understanding of each other.”³³ On a personal level, blacks appreciated that they often benefited from racial militancy. “Demonstrations do help,” an account executive at a Chicago public relations firm noted. “They call attention to what people are trying to get across. Out of the Watts riots in Los Angeles have come many, many opportunities.”³⁴ As panicked companies scrambled in response, blacks seized the moment. “The disorders in Chicago helped me,” the owner of a new Anheuser-Busch distributorship remarked. He advised the young to begin their business careers in cities where the substantial racial disorders occurred.³⁵ The educated and qualified were especially fed up with the glacial pace of integration in corporate settings, and the threat of violence enhanced their bargaining power. A black banker said that without urban riots, “the bastards won’t move. [The black community needs] some more Rap Browns and Stokely Carmichaels.”³⁶

The black middle-class response to riots was opportunistic in part because they knew that they could no more control the discontent than could the police. The uprisings were shocking to whites ignorant of the unbearable ghetto conditions, but the black middle class lived in close proximity to these areas. They saw the seething anger and realized how little they could do about it. A “leadership vacuum” existed in ghetto areas, the Chicago Defender noted in 1965, and was likely only be filled from within. The average black rioter associated the black middle class with the city’s power structure and was distrustful of their shopworn assurances that improvements would only arrive through their access to white power brokers. As a letter writer noted, “All economic gains made in the civil rights movement have benefited only a few chosen individuals, and the masses of Negroes still live in the ghettoes,” where they are “no better off than they were 10 years ago.”³⁷ The black middle class was aware of this disparity, but also knew that the fires burned because of white decisions and were not about to “keep a lid” on situations for them. In 1968, blacks were 20 percent of Cook County’s population, but held less than 3 percent of the county’s nearly eleven thousand policy-making positions in private and public institutions.³⁸ If African Americans were to make a difference for the race, they needed more of these spots.

Black activists kept the heat on corporations to open salaried occupations, emboldened by white fears of continued uprisings. Many in positions of authority could trace their appointments as concessions to groups like Operation Breadbasket and Operation PUSH, both of which were spearheaded by civil rights leader Jesse Jackson.³⁹ For instance, in 1972 the Schlitz Brewing Company and Operation PUSH signed a historic agreement guaranteeing the black community a larger share of the firm’s business, jobs, and profits. Schlitz made more than 15 percent of its sales to blacks nationally and was eager to avoid a boycott. Among other stipulations, the accord opened 185 white-collar jobs to African Americans and ensured a black person would fill at least one position on the board of directors.⁴⁰ Miller Brewing agreed to a covenant a year later, pledging to double the number of black managers and institute an internship program at black colleges.⁴¹ As a black public relations director noted, a company doing business in Chicago needed to “be aware” of Jesse Jackson.⁴²

CORPORATE INTRANSIGENCE

Even as they made gains, black applicants had good reason to doubt the earnestness of corporate America. Studies showed that most corporations were not interested in equal opportunity but instead in “getting by” and “achieving minimum compliance” in order to avoid public relations disasters and government sanctions.⁴³ The media dubbed 1964 the “year of the interview” as companies hurried to previously ignored black colleges, but Business Week reported that skepticism of the private sector led many black graduates to government posts where they traditionally got a better shake from civil service.⁴⁴ An estimated 60 percent of black professional workers in Chicago in the 1960s were employed in the public sector, compared to only 22 percent of whites.⁴⁵ While more companies advertised themselves as “Equal Opportunity Employers,” African Americans referred to the help wanted section as the “funny pages.”⁴⁶ They recalled instances where they had shown up for interviews, only to be told “that position has already been filled”—and then walked out of the personnel office past a line of white prospects.⁴⁷ As an activist in Chicago noted in 1972, companies often made a “big to do” about recruiting at historically black colleges and universities, but their actual results were meager.⁴⁸

Companies were caught off guard by the black push to join corporate America. Executives delighted in technical and production innovations, but most of these same men were overwhelmingly conservative when it came to social and political matters. Textbooks and management training assured executives that certain groups were just not suited for Mahogany Row. Chester Barnard’s The Functions of the Executive, a staple of college management courses in its eighteenth printing in 1968, stressed that decision makers must have “social compatibility” and that minorities lacked the “fitness” for organizational collaboration. Barnard instructed that irrespective of competence, social outsiders “cannot be promoted or selected . . . because they ‘do not fit.’”⁴⁹ In essence, Barnard advised that companies create managerial ranks made up of well-educated Anglo-Saxon Protestant men. A study of top executives in 1975 found that the upper ranks were becoming more homogeneous. They were exclusively male and Caucasian, predominantly Protestant, Republican, of Eastern US origin, and almost all came from affluent families and a handful of select universities. As one critic quipped, corporate officers were “so inbred they resemble the emperors of ancient Rome.”⁵⁰

Executives had varied reactions to the civil rights movement, yet most remained deeply reluctant to bring African Americans and other minorities aboard. Oblivious executives simply denied that racism existed, while others recognized it at other firms but were “virtually blind” to discrimination in their own companies.⁵¹ A consultant candidly stated that “for many businesses, an equal employment opportunity program is unpleasant, annoying, and expensive.” Recalcitrant executives made token hires and then privately asked, “When will they stop? How far will the civil rights people go?” Many were perplexed over why groups such as Jesse Jackson’s PUSH fervently pressed them when they thought blacks already had made momentous advancements. The more hidebound business leaders simply fell back on their existing stereotypes to resist making changes.⁵² “Let’s face it,” former Avis CEO Robert Townsend wrote. “The vast majority of corporations are still operating with dice loaded against Jews, black people, and women of all races and creeds.”⁵³

Businessmen provided a host of explanations for their intransigence. Common in the 1950s and early 1960s was the “third party” argument, where the executive claimed that while he was not personally racist, his customers and employees would not stand for blacks in white-collar positions. Worries over negative reactions to black employees virtually barred them from being hired in “sophisticated contact work,” including banking, sales, and advertising. The ban served two purposes: it justified exclusion while distancing employers from its causes. “Personally I don’t care if a man is black or white,” a personnel manager declared. “But the man I hire is going to have to deal with a lot of people who would be uncomfortable if he were Negro. So I won’t hire a Negro.” Another cautious executive claimed employing minorities in contact positions would also make customers uneasy. While he admitted he could not cite a specific example, “it’s just that we deal with so many companies that there is bound to be someone who feels this way.”⁵⁴ Critics pointed out that managerial fears were often overblown, and integrationists urged executives not to pander to the lowest common denominator. As a Harvard Business Review writer noted, “Just because a Negro salesman can’t sell bed sheets to the Ku Klux Klan does not mean that he can’t sell sheets.”⁵⁵

More enlightened executives contended that while they wanted to hire blacks, there were just not enough in the labor pool. There was some credence to this claim. The legacies of racism produced educational shortcomings. College-educated African Americans preparing for careers that were open to them continued to train in the traditional professions of preaching and teaching. Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, companies truly did have difficulty recruiting in science and technology, as historically black colleges produced only about 200 graduates in these fields per year.⁵⁶ In 1973, over 44,000 new engineers graduated from college, but only 405 were black.⁵⁷

However, many executives pushed this argument too far, using questionable test results and doubts over qualifications as cover. Firms surveyed by U.S. News & World Report in 1963 maintained they could not even locate African Americans suitable for entry-level, white-collar jobs. Civil rights activists scoffed at these reports, noting that employees could be easily trained, while black employment agencies declared that they had ready applicants for every kind of position. Though a 1963 Business Week article stated that the principal hurdle for black job seekers was “not prejudice based on the color of his skin but his lack of preparation,” paradoxically the article also revealed that only 11 percent of whites with a year or more of college were laboring in low-skill, low-paid jobs, while 33 percent of blacks were confined to these stations, showing that many corporations were underutilizing black workers already on the payroll. In addition, a 1972 study showed that even if education levels were equal in the North, black workers would still be hired at levels a full third below parity with whites. When directors at the Chicago-based Motorola Corporation said they could not find qualified black candidates, Urban League Executive Director Edwin Berry lambasted them, saying the company “has been going almost nowhere in hiring Negroes for white-collar jobs. All Motorola has to do is issue job orders. It’s that simple.”⁵⁸ Contrary to popular opinion, the educational requirements for almost all white-collar jobs dropped from 1940 to 1970 due to the sector’s expansion and a tight labor market.⁵⁹ While there was a supply-and-demand mismatch in employment for certain technical positions, companies aggravated the problem by failing to make and implement diligent recruitment, training, and promotion policies.

The civil rights drive called into question the entire merit-based edifice that corporate executives had supposedly created. As managers continued to insist that there simply were not enough competent African Americans to fill salaried openings and that affirmative action meant lowering standards, several candid executives admitted that the criteria for many administrative jobs were either so arbitrary or hard to define that any rationale could be used. Businesses overemphasized credentials when most duties were learned on the job, and the preponderance of corporate managers held titles not directly related to their major field of study in college. Most galling were companies such as Equitable Life Insurance, which claimed it could not find any black insurance salespeople even though that career had long been a point of pride for African Americans. Though personnel directors swore by it, “qualified” turned out to have decidedly subjective connotations, and employment officers divulged that there was no mixture of education, experience, and personality that predicted how an applicant would fare. Some top executives had themselves risen through the ranks despite what might be judged as inadequate credentials and were thus hesitant to characterize in detail what it meant to be “qualified.” Aside from technical abilities, one expert divulged, “‘qualified’ often means the measure of the human chemistry that exists between interviewer and candidate.” When pressed, other executives confessed that the business world’s boasted meritocracy had never existed, but it was necessary to maintain the facade, for as a white vice president of corporate affairs noted, “It’s the myth that keeps the system going.”⁶⁰

Businesses that made a genuine effort to recruit and train African Americans learned that the task was not nearly as insurmountable as some executives considered it. Firms that moved from a policy of “non-discrimination” to “affirmative action” discovered that after they hired blacks in jobs matching their qualifications, they received an abundance of black applications. History taught minority job seekers that openings advertised in the mainstream press were “white” jobs, but when corporations tapped into the “Negro grapevine” of the black media, churches, the Urban League, and historically black colleges, they noticeably improved the size and composition of the prospective talent pool.⁶¹ Companies also hired black recruiters, putting African American job seekers at ease and boosting minority hiring. After a company transferred one black manager to the personnel office, his new coworkers constantly told him that “we can’t find any blacks” and carped over orienting and training the few African Americans they had taken on. The manager pointed out the obvious: the personnel office had no black employees or black input in training programs. He then set out on the recruiting trail. “I went out and found so many blacks in each of the job areas they wanted that they had to force me to stop.”⁶² Entrepreneurs also formed black-owned employment services in Northern cities, starting their own networks within the corporate world.⁶³ These firms worked to dispel the myth of the shortage of qualified African Americans. “Tell me about a job opening,” a Chicago executive recruiter asserted, “and I’ll find a black professional who can meet its requirements.”⁶⁴

LIFE ON THE INSIDE

By the late 1960s, significant numbers of Africans Americans occupied offices once off-limits to them. The declaration by an American Motors executive that “the Negro is frequently unemployable except in the most menial jobs” was proven false throughout the civil rights push, as black workers showed themselves to be more than capable in a host of positions.⁶⁵ As a 1968 television special A Black Man in a White Collar related, it was a “new day” for the educated, and the time of being offered the “mop and broom” was over.⁶⁶ Blacks in salaried managerial positions went up 49 percent from 1962 to 1969. Almost all minorities acknowledged that affirmative action helped impel this transformation, but once inside corporate America their trials had just begun. Though both employers and fellow African Americans often expected them to “represent the race” and “set a good example,” blacks in the salaried ranks were far from homogeneous. They varied in attitudes, goals, feelings toward the civil rights movement, and the significance of their racial identities.⁶⁷

Many educated African Americans had been impatiently waiting and planning for opportunities in the mainstream. Despite centuries of racism, youths were often told by their elders to work hard, stay out of trouble, and opportunities will come. In contrast to E. Franklin Frazier’s scathing view of the black middle class living in a world of “make-believe,” parents were grooming their children for the changes ahead. What Frazier saw as self-delusion was considered dress rehearsal by some African Americans. As one college graduate remembered, Ebony magazine’s articles detailing corporations selecting blacks for junior executive posts “was like hearing Jackie Robinson had hit another home run.” Many young African Americans were cautiously optimistic and eager to meet the challenges ahead. As the first black hire in research at Chicago’s General Foods in 1962 stated in Ebony, “There’s no limit to how far I can go in the company.”⁶⁸

Confidence could only go so far, and corporate life was foreign for most people unfamiliar with the mores. Race added an extra level of pressure and discomfort. Though radical militants accused the middle class of blending into white society, as Albert Murray observed, “The minute a Negro moves into any integrated situation in the U.S. he becomes blacker than ever before.”⁶⁹ Employers and coworkers often expected black managers to be “super-negroes.” As a researcher found, whites wanted them to “combine pride and humility, wisdom and receptiveness, strength and tolerance, soberness and humor, aggressiveness and patience, ambition and satisfaction, and all this simultaneously and in delicate balance.” Some of these expectations set up blacks to fail, and employers could claim that they had tried to diversify, but the hire had come up short.⁷⁰ Pioneers knew the spotlight was on them and that they usually would not be measured by the same standards as white peers.

Many encountered awkward interpersonal dealings. A marketing specialist noted that black hires were “constantly called on to interpret actions of all Negroes—the janitor to the secretary to Whitney Young to Rap Brown.”⁷¹ Interviewers and coworkers sometimes sincerely believed they were putting blacks at ease by asking them about “negro issues,” but African Americans often wondered if they should tell them what they wanted to hear. Most did not consider themselves authorized to give the “black opinion” and blanched at the idea that blacks all thought alike on racial matters. “I developed the feeling that I was considered a black first and an individual second,” a manager recalled. He also felt that he was constantly “on stage” for whites at the office, as they not only wanted to see how he would perform but also how he would react to racially sensitive situations in and out of the workplace.⁷² An analyst at a suburban Chicago gas firm agreed, stating, “As a black man I feel we are constantly on a proving ground. Work performance is scrutinized more for blacks than for whites.”⁷³ Management occupations emphasized the complicated equilibrium of individual achievement and teamwork. For African Americans this balance was even more knotty. Supervisors scrutinized their personal performance closely, and the employees knew that they were a test case for racial integration. It was a heavy cross to bear.

Predictably, fraught situations came up often. Entire levels of intimate and professional integration involved delicate negotiations. An African American man promoted to stock supervisor at Carson Pirie Scott was lauded for his ability to fit in, but his boss warned him about “integrating too fast,” because white associates were unnerved by his invitations to join him for coffee breaks.⁷⁴ Due to these admonitions, black pioneers walked on eggshells, at once a part of the company and yet unsure if a casual gesture could violate racial taboos. Even senior black executives were cognizant they could be “put in their place” at any moment, whether through building security guards unnecessarily checking their credentials or being repeatedly mistaken for the delivery man.⁷⁵ Many black employees felt that they stuck out yet were invisible in so many ways.

White responses to black coworkers ranged from awkwardness to downright hostility. Even most liberals were clueless about how to treat, act around, or talk to blacks. At Sears, Chuck Harrison resigned himself to the realization that racist mind-sets were “ingrained” among most of his white coworkers. “Every day somebody said something out of order,” Harrison recalled. “In most cases, they didn’t even know what they were saying.”⁷⁶ Some were transparently antagonistic. One black woman’s exhilaration that she had been able to find work quickly after graduation turned to dismay when a male coworker cracked, “Well, that fills our quota for this month.” Likewise, another new hire felt the prestige of his graduate degrees in engineering and business melt away on his first day as a coworker remarked, “Uh oh, there goes the neighborhood.”⁷⁷ African American workers were almost certain to encounter the “nigger” joke, and a black manager noted that telling an ethnic gag was a “kind of ticket of admission to management meetings.” Management consultants warned black novices that racial humor was inevitable, and they must walk the tightrope between coming off as the “Chairman of the Black Panther Party” or “Step ’n’ Fetchit.” Offending coworkers were frequently embarrassed in retrospect, but the damage was done. Some executives were unrepentant, pining for the days when their privileges included putting minorities and women “in their place” through risqué humor. A chagrined former executive at a Big Eight accounting firm recalled that in his day a business lunch meant a “good meal and good conversations with men of your own ilk. Now if you want to tell a joke, you have to look around the table first. One of your partners may be Negro, Spanish, a Jew or a woman. You know how sensitive they are.”⁷⁸ For white male chauvinists, diversity meant a loss of their cherished camaraderie and signaled the end of the old order.

Once hired, black employees still often encountered the bigotry of low expectations and the belief that they had taken the position from a more qualified candidate. In the early 1960s, critics engaged in a “frontlash” against policy changes, alleging that employers were engaging in “bias against whites” and “reverse discrimination.”⁷⁹ Employers went to extraordinary lengths to appease white employees during this period of transition. Personnel directors suggested that black hires should start in jobs beneath their capabilities to “insure peace.”⁸⁰ Occasionally, executives thought the best approach to integration was “trial by fire,” where the black novices were given the most challenging jobs to prove themselves to white coworkers.⁸¹ Most blacks, however, experienced the opposite. Supervisors viewed them as “experiments” that needed the kid-gloves treatment. A vice president of human relations at Motorola admitted “we’re attempting to place Negroes in white-collar jobs where they’ll be a credit to their race.”⁸²

Too regularly, black recruits were company “showpieces,” hired to blunt criticism from both civil rights activists and the hostility of white employees. In the early 1960s civil rights groups accused businesses of slotting blacks as mail room chiefs and in other managerial stations that were out of sight but could be touted when investigators came. Similarly, they worried that hires were merely “concessions.” Industrial Management magazine remarked that companies sought the “instant negro” to work in “some nebulous capacity” without actual responsibilities. Comedian Dick Gregory joked that he saw a sign advertising “Hertz Rent-a-Negro.”⁸³ While broad-minded company executives expressed a genuine desire to hire minorities out of fairness, others were merely trying to avoid losing customers and government contracts. “Frankly and confidentially,” a recruiter told the Wall Street Journal, “it’s window dressing.” Black managers were often uncertain of their roles and insecure over their status. “The worst things about being a black in the corporate world,” an executive noted, “is that you never really know for sure whether they employed you for your color or your abilities, or whether you will be allowed to have any real influence.”⁸⁴ One manager felt he was still on the outside despite his title. White employers hired him and other blacks because the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was “looking at their ass and they know it,” but these token workers were not decision-makers. “Sharing sensitive information or real company politics is not required by law,” he noted. “And seeing me as a real person isn’t either.”⁸⁵ The underutilized employees collected their paychecks and seethed, knowing that they could not demonstrate their full capabilities.

Civil rights activists pushing for more black influence at the top echelons were disappointed as career paths regularly stalled. Most corporate promotions were not “posted” for application, and selections happened behind closed doors. In the cautious confines of the corporation, advancement came on the basis of “don’t rock the boat,” and even progressive firms struggled to break managers of discriminatory practices.⁸⁶ In Chicago, blacks held less than 5 percent of white-collar jobs in 1967, and about 80 percent of these were positions at the lower end of the salary scale.⁸⁷ Ebony reported that one firm suffered from 400 percent turnover among black professionals, as they believed they would be forever relegated to “paper shuffling.”⁸⁸

Top positions were especially out of reach. In 1967 the Illinois Fair Employment Practices Commission noted a “clear trend” in decreasing complaints over racial restrictions in hiring, but a sharp uptick in grievances by minority workers over training and upgrading. Whereas in earlier years some educated blacks were content just to have landed a salaried post, by the late 1960s they were demanding equal chances for promotions. A sampling of black executives in Chicago rated “opportunity for advancement” as the most significant factor in choosing their current job, with these prospects even outpacing salary concerns.⁸⁹ Cases involving advancement were hard to verify, and enforcement agencies generally focused on discrimination at the entry level. Yet, as a member of Chicago’s Human Rights Commission learned, “Supervisors can, in subtle ways, throw blocks at a Negro.”⁹⁰ In 1970, only about 25 blacks nationally had achieved vice presidencies in large corporations, and they were virtually nonexistent on corporate boards of directors.⁹¹ A decade later, a survey of 13,000 managers ranked as department heads or higher by the Chicago Urban League found only 117 African Americans. After seeing the study, the Labor Department’s Weldon Rougeau was dismayed. A long-time activist, he had graduated from Loyola University Chicago being expelled from Southern University after repeated arrests at civil rights demonstrations. “Deep in their hearts,” he said, “many whites still can’t accept the idea of equal opportunity.”⁹² For black workers, figuring out whether their employer would give them a chance was an integral part of their success equation.

Frustration became more evident as black careers stagnated. In 1972, a federal government study reported widespread unhappiness from American workers, and “the most dissatisfied group of American workers . . . is found among young black people in white-collar jobs.”⁹³ Earning a spot in the corporate world was not necessarily translating into fulfilling careers and decision-making authority. A survey of black managers concluded that 60 percent were more qualified in terms of formal education, technical skills, and managerial experience than their immediate supervisor.⁹⁴

The problems of advancement persisted throughout the 1970s. In a 1978 letter to Continental Bank executives, a Chicago Urban League official thanked the bank for integrating but stressed the importance of upgrading more minorities in “professional industrial environments. If we are not placing our grads in this area, we are not meeting our goal.”⁹⁵ Corporate spokespeople often retorted that promotions took time and that many black managers lacked experience. African American executives were skeptical about this gradualism. “People used to joke about ‘the spook by the door’—the one black employee that many companies hired and put in a visible position to show they weren’t prejudiced,” Clark Burrus, a black senior vice president at Chicago’s First National Bank, said in 1980. “If things have changed since then, I sure haven’t seen it.” Burrus, a mentor for African American professionals who had willed his way from handling the books for jazz singer Sarah Vaughan to becoming Chicago’s first black city comptroller, expressed dismay that he was often the only black face in boardrooms.⁹⁶ Indeed, a 1979 survey of blacks in corporate America found that only 13 percent felt that they had a “high” chance to advance in their place of work.⁹⁷

By hiring black managers to prevent future urban riots, corporations placed African Americans off the “executive escalator” from the start. Regardless of their training, companies shunted them into what one commentator called “The Relations”: community, industrial, public, and personnel. While these could be important positions, they were not tied to the revenue-producing cores that prepped managers for the senior ranks.⁹⁸ As a black management trainee asked sardonically, “Who ever heard of a chief executive who got his job because he was brilliant in urban affairs?” African American employees worried that outright exclusion had been replaced by more understated forms of discrimination where companies, as one executive stated, “shelve their black employees and forget about them.” Edward Williams, a black vice president at Chicago’s Harris Trust & Savings, noted that “companies remain unwilling to put blacks in sensitive positions where they haven’t been tested, where they can affect the bottom line. Better to put them in personnel or urban affairs, where the worst they can do is give out too many tickets to a baseball game.”⁹⁹ As one black job seeker remarked, “I don’t want to be hired as an engineer and then find myself assigned as the company’s representative to Plans for Progress or some other government-sponsored program in the equal opportunity bag. Above all, deliver me from presiding over the company table at the annual Urban League dinner!”¹⁰⁰ Black employees had come a long way from the days of college-educated elevator operators, but they still worried about company motives. Several managers discovered that their supposed elevations meant tamping down black rank-and-file dissent or firing disgruntled workers because supervisors were afraid to deal with racial discontent.¹⁰¹

Most had no interest in doing company dirty work, and not surprisingly, many African Americans were disappointed with these “relations” positions. In a 1972 study, 63 percent of black managers in race-related departments reported low job satisfaction, while 80 percent of blacks in profit-making branches indicated high satisfaction. Seven years later, Urban League studies discovered that workers in “staff” positions removed from the company bottom line were much more likely to feel blocked from fully achieving their goals. Possibly because so many African Americans ended up in these posts, the survey found that the majority of black managers thought they were in marginal positions in their respective companies.¹⁰² The writer Orde Coombs, hired in 1968 at Western Electric as a “Senior Public Relations Specialist” even though he had no familiarity with the field, noted that he “could have done the job with both eyes closed and my pen between my teeth.” His task, he soon detected, was to “unwrinkle the public face of the company,” a post that only reinforced his belief that he was a showpiece for the corporation.¹⁰³ This marginality also meant black managers occupied precarious perches. As sociologist Sharon Collins shows, the “functional segregation” of black professionals “locked them into limited and fragile career paths” as economic downturns and the conservative backlash against civil rights made these jobholders “economically expendable.”¹⁰⁴ In the 1980s, as corporations merged and looked to get “lean,” black managers were more vulnerable to layoffs as corporations deemed relations departments unessential.¹⁰⁵

Yet while companies were spurred to hire in reaction to racial tensions and race politics were an ever-present reality at the workplace, corporate cultures expected blacks to conform and leave their “blackness” behind. Sometimes companies took this color preference quite seriously, hiring only light- and brown-skinned African Americans. Others stressed selecting hires with compatible personalities.¹⁰⁶ Whites extolled black employees who discarded supposed negative “black” traits. For instance, associates of an African American manager at Carson Pirie Scott were so impressed by his drive and talents that they “never [thought] of him as being ‘colored.’” Not only had this employee became an honorary white man, but his coworkers evidently believed that ambition and skill were not common black characteristics. Even well-meaning tutorials for the aspiring at times trafficked in broad stereotypes to encourage cultural whitening, such as warning against keeping “colored people’s time” and stating that in order to succeed they must eliminate “jive behavior.”¹⁰⁷ The message was straightforward: employees would need to adapt to white standards if upper management was going to regard them as “team players.” A degree of nonconformity by whites could be idiosyncratic, a black banking vice president noted, but “anything that’s different when you’re black just makes you stand out more.”¹⁰⁸

Activists wanted black managers and executives to assist with racial uplift, but companies usually expected them to keep their viewpoints on civil rights and black power to themselves. As Ebony magazine observed in 1966, corporate America was looking for the “acceptable Negro.” As in the past, “the white man is still putting a premium on docility and obedience—not only on the job but in everyday life.”¹⁰⁹ Corporations obsessed with how beginners would “fit” wanted black personnel who left their politics out of the office. A brochure written by the director of personnel at Owens-Illinois counseled that the first minority workers “must be selected carefully” for “appraisal of the person’s attitude as well as abilities. People with a chip on the shoulder should be avoided.”¹¹⁰ Managers learned to avoid the tag “militant” as if it were the plague, as it “will get all kinds of doors shut for you.” One corporate attorney had his career turn for the worse after he was elected spokesperson for the company’s black caucus. “I did the speaking and after that the word was out on me,” he recalled. “I was a militant, I hated white people, you should have heard the rumors that were spread on me.” The silence on civil rights issues was especially difficult because whites often ran to black workers for their “take” as the dramas unfolded in the media. Yet African Americans needed to keep their opinions close to their vests, especially when anger bubbled up. “One thing they wouldn’t deal with is an angry black man,” a manager said about his supervisors, “so you had to be very careful even about the tone of your voice.”¹¹¹ While black Americans often called for white-collar African Americans to be community leaders, their employers urged them to mute their activism.

Black corporate pioneers had mixed responses to these competing demands. Though they usually conceded that racism existed, ardent individualists urged others to underplay race and move forward. They assumed African Americans could only rise by maintaining a positive attitude, assimilating, and persevering. Advancing “the race” was not their priority, at least in any explicit fashion. One manager said he had thrived by staying aloof from “movements and organizations” and thinking of himself as “an individual, not as a classification.” While he recognized that he had encountered racism, “I don’t let discrimination stand in my way. . . . Now my reputation goes before me.”¹¹² Richard Jackson, the vice president of engineering at Chicago’s Gits Brothers, counseled his peers to adapt to white professional norms. He dismissed “black power” as a futile distraction. “There is only one form of power and that’s green power, and the only way the black guy is going to do anything is to get associated with that power.”¹¹³ Though these managers seemed out of step with the cultural currents of the era, in some cases this style of resolve may have been the only effective way of flourishing, or at least surviving, on the job. Many firms made it quite clear to black employees that malcontents and militants would be dismissed or buried.

In contrast, others scolded their assimilationist peers, insisting that they had larger duties. They objected to the notion that equal opportunity meant measuring oneself by white standards and conforming to white styles. One manager worried his company was stripping him of his sartorial choices, humor, and identity, the “existential things that are part of your racial heritage.”¹¹⁴ As many critics had warned, integration often appeared to be a one-way street. A purchasing agent for Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical believed that “the problems concerning blacks in private industries are white problems. It’s about time the whites went through some of the changes, rather than sending us through them all.”¹¹⁵ The industrial psychologist Stuart Taylor argued that it was mentally unhealthy to be black while trying to be “white” at the same time. He advised African American employees that they would be both more productive and at ease if they stayed true to themselves.¹¹⁶

Yet for many black white-collars, preserving their black cultural characteristics and advancing up the ladder were incompatible. A Chicago banking supervisor sensed a strong pull to sit next to other African Americans in the cafeteria so he could “‘feel black’ for just 45 minutes.” But he did not want coworkers to “refer to it as the ‘black table’” and believed that he had to sit with whites. “This is unnatural; it is unnatural to turn yourself away from that with which you feel most comfortable.”¹¹⁷ Listening to coworkers discuss water sports and skydiving at the all-important after-hours events left a weary black manager “bored as hell,” but he knew that he would have to endure these situations if he expected to be promoted.¹¹⁸ As Bayard Rustin noted, much of the criticism of middle-class blacks came from peers dealing with their own guilt and anxieties over racial authenticity. “The lower classes,” Rustin noted, “are too busy trying to become middle class to feel guilty about their aspirations.” Yet even Rustin acknowledged that many of the successful felt “uneasily suspended” between the black masses and white elites, while simultaneously trying to please both groups.¹¹⁹ Racial identity struggles became even more complex as black managers tried to decipher the corporate world’s unwritten rules.

THE SHADOW CORPORATION

One of the most confounding and discriminatory elements of corporate life was the “shadow corporation.” This informal structure existed in nearly every large company, though one would never find it in the employee handbook. It was the after-work schmoozing, the gatherings at country clubs, and the networking that not only played a fundamental role in company business, but in Chicago’s power structure as well. Blacks achieved more managerial posts, but their inability to crack into select circles showed the limits of their abilities to make substantial changes.

Membership in exclusive clubs was nearly a prerequisite for success in the corporate world, placing the member and his family among the local elite. For generations, Americans announced that they had “made it” through acceptance to the country club. The country club was more than a place to broadcast status, though, as it was also vital to business dealings and contacts. By the 1950s, businessmen made country clubs as important to operations as the adding machine and Rolodex. “The club is really a kind of grease, like a fraternity,” a Chicago executive stated. “It makes it easier for you to pick up business.”¹²⁰ The club was also a prime site to angle for jobs and promotions, as most businesses hired according to the referral system.¹²¹

The problem of the club became more acute as the pace of integration sped up and companies struggled to bring black workers into the entirety of corporate life. Oftentimes, their initial responses were clumsy at best, transparently discriminatory at worst. For example, executives at Chicago’s American National Bank decided to keep their Christmas outing at a white-only country club and give cash to black employees barred from attending.¹²² As Ebony magazine noted, blacks were blocked from making strides in salaried positions not only by outright prejudice but also by “subtle detours” that barred them from membership in business organizations and clubs. “Because a junior executive job depends largely upon acceptance in country club circles, few Negro employees become junior executives.”¹²³ A manager candidly admitted that he used to play basketball, but he took up golf after realizing that staff meetings would end with someone saying, “Let’s work out the details on the 19th green.” On the course, “I got into the free-flowing communications. I learned a lot by socializing . . . things I never learned in school.”¹²⁴

Calculating executives used informal criteria to mask discrimination, claiming that they were not denying jobs and promotions because of race, but because African Americans were “different” and did “not fit well into the necessary social aspects of the job.”¹²⁵ As late as 1980, Bernard Anderson, a black economist with the Rockefeller Foundation, said that the paucity of African Americans in the executive ranks was due to unfamiliarity with “corporate culture”: the social contacts, corporate politicking, and technical expertise that propelled careers.¹²⁶ While this was certainly true, black employees were deficient in these areas because of the racism inherent in the corporate club system. White male executives at ease with people like them deflected attempts by others to join their elite circles.

In addition, black and white managers did not live and travel together, as discrimination created extra barriers, diminished interracial socialization, and scuttled promotions. From 1958 to 1969, Chicago gained a mere 37,000 jobs, while its suburbs added a whopping 584,000.¹²⁷ Capital flight was especially pronounced on the majority-black South and West Sides, which actually lost jobs during this economic expansion.¹²⁸ A steel industry executive charged that this was not just the result of market factors, as many firms were moving to the suburbs “in order to assure themselves of a white workforce.”¹²⁹ The “Chicago Wall” meant that many blacks lived a great distance from these new opportunities, college graduates turned down opportunities to move to the area because of limited housing prospects, and employees did not dwell in the same neighborhoods as their white coworkers.¹³⁰ Black dissatisfaction with their careers often stemmed from the realization that they could not attain the same housing, education, and consumer goods that their white peers attained. “Spatial mismatch,” the problem of living far from suitable employment, not only plagued low-income African Americans, but educated blacks looking for high-status positions. In one telling example, executives at Allstate deemed their minority recruitment program a success. Several African Americans had landed permanent posts. However, a downside was that two black female interns had four-hour daily commutes to Allstate’s suburban offices.¹³¹

Promotions often required relocating to another city, but blacks knew that this would mean another painful search for a new residence. As a black home seeker stated, this process made him feel “as something less than human.” Many declined the offers, feeling that the added stress was not worth it.¹³² Business trips, especially to the South, meant searching for accommodating hotels and restaurants, and black workers sometimes had agonizing racial incidents when just trying to find a meal or a bed.¹³³ Though African Americans made inroads into the corporate workplace, their careers were often slowed by factors whites did not have to contemplate.

While blacks struggled to break into this side of the business scene, they learned that the effort was nearly as convoluted as getting hired in the first place. “Many of these people can be treacherous when they’ve had a few drinks,” a scarred manager observed after experiencing club life. “Ugly remarks and incidents are not uncommon under these circumstances. You’ve got to rationally weigh those risks when deciding whether accepting an invitation to join the club will produce enough career benefits to justify the aggravation of socializing with many people you would just as soon have nothing to do with you off the job.”¹³⁴ For reasons like this, hesitant black managers declined social invitations though they knew they would be further distanced from vital company decisions occurring over cocktails and on putting greens.

PRESSURE AND PERSEVERANCE

The impediments to African Americans entering corporate America were met by a striking perseverance from pioneers. Walter Clark came to Chicago with an accounting degree in 1951 but received no offers. Disturbed but undaunted, he enrolled in master’s degree courses at DePaul University while taking odd jobs. He finally landed an accounting clerk position at First Federal Savings and Loan in 1955, the company’s first black employee. Though better educated than any of his coworkers, he stagnated at the entry level. His immediate boss had not even finished high school. “When your supervisors come to you for help with simple calculations,” Clark recalled, “you know you’re getting screwed.” No one was willing to show him the ropes. “It was like being thrown into water loaded with barracudas. My options were to swim faster than hell or be eaten alive. I swam.” Many coworkers saw him as a threat, and the personnel director constantly inquired about his marital status and scolded him after he danced with a white woman at a company function. Clark finally began to move up in the company after seven years, and then, after self-educating himself in bond trading, he convinced First Federal’s board to let him set up a highly profitable trading unit inside the firm. Yet the shadow corporation stymied him, as he could not bring clients to white-only clubs. The chair suggested he make alternative arrangements, but Clark refused. In response, the chair sponsored him for the Union League Club in 1971, where Clark became the second black member. By 1974 Clark’s patient persistence proved worthwhile as he was the senior vice president in charge of First Federal’s investment program.¹³⁵

For newcomers such as Clark, pioneering was a paradox. It entailed heavy burdens, but the payoff in terms of legacy and personal rewards could be profoundly satisfying. Despite the stress, the determined took pride in the role of trailblazer.¹³⁶ The first executive in the American airline industry felt “I had to develop an image which would make it difficult, if not impossible, for an individual to say that a black man could not hold down an executive position with a major airline.”¹³⁷ Many blacks also felt they were indebted to previous generations who had sacrificed to give them these opportunities, whether through civil rights agitation or plain hard work.¹³⁸ The onus was well-defined; these men and women were test cases for the future of minority employment. While some black managers were initially intimidated by their new surroundings, once inside the scales fell from their eyes. They had underestimated their own potential and overestimated the capabilities of white coworkers, and they tapped the hidden reservoirs of the black experience, such as how to cunningly but doggedly resist power and handle the racist behavior of others.¹³⁹

Black white-collars acclimatized to corporate life using a variety of approaches. Among the most essential was thick skin. To be successful, black managers could not be derailed by the racial prejudice of others. They were not self-deluded, but they had to implement a mind-set that racism was the bigot’s problem.¹⁴⁰ Service organizations such as Chicago’s Royal Coterie of Snakes were not only beneficial to advancement, they also allowed members to vent and discuss “survival tactics.” “The only thing that keeps my head intact is the chance to get with other [black executives] now and then and talk that talk,” a black personnel recruiter admitted. “It’s a mental-health device, to be able to call the Man a motherfucker once in a while.”¹⁴¹

This resolve could lead to gratifying careers for African Americans in corporate America. Though nearly all encountered racially motivated slights, they knew staying in “the system” had rewards.¹⁴² Some in managerial careers reported coworkers and supervisors had accepted them with “surprisingly little fuss.”¹⁴³ While promotions remained a problem, certain executives were sincerely committed to tapping into burgeoning minority markets, an attitude that jibed with the ideology of risk-taking black professionals. “There’s only one color that the business is interested in,” an engineering manager at General Electric discovered. “It is not white or Negro but green. If you can make the southeast corner of the balance sheet come out right, industry, as I have seen it, doesn’t really give a hoot who you are or what you are.”¹⁴⁴ Despite the numerous extra struggles white-collar blacks faced, they knew that their prospects had improved significantly, as just years earlier the best that many with education could hope for was the post office or segregated businesses.

In addition, corporate work became increasingly lucrative as the knowledge economy boomed. Managerial positions imparted the ability to indulge in prosperity and to enhance prospects for their children. “They give you the good bucks and a taste of the good life and it’s hard to leave it,” one executive affirmed. “You get caught up in that bag and you assimilate in order to enjoy the benefits.”¹⁴⁵ Even those who served in oft-frustrating “penciled-in” positions occasionally conceded that the remuneration made it worthwhile. A stymied manager recognized that while he was the company’s “spook who sat by the door,” he “charged them well for it.”¹⁴⁶ Money, leisure time, and job security usually could not overcome dissatisfied feelings about their careers, but they kept many black workers from quitting.

IDENTITY ISSUES

This persistence opened doors for future black hires, but the activists who pushed for inclusion had more expansive goals, and skeptical African Americans questioned whether entering the system benefited the race. Chicago Urban League executive director Edwin Berry relished the gains made in the white-collar ranks, but warned that while the privileged were being offered “access to the total society,” the mass of Chicago’s blacks were left out.¹⁴⁷ As the middle class expanded and its fortunes blossomed, civil rights leaders charged that while the movement had decidedly improved conditions for them, it had not done much for the poor.¹⁴⁸ Critics noted that the rise of a viable black middle class coincided with the collapse of the black working class as automation and capital flight decimated the blue-collar workforce.

Intrarace class divisions widened, and vociferous black power militants dismissed mainstream success as “selling out.” The concern that black managers would lose touch with their race was evident from the initial breakthroughs. Ebony, which enthusiastically cheered advancements, also warned that these pioneers must maintain their dignity, lauding “the white collar worker who refused to tom.”¹⁴⁹ Commentators worried that through adopting corporate values, black managers were “unconsciously devaluing” the less fortunate and, ultimately, themselves. More militant cynics charged that staying authentically black in business attire was an inherent contradiction, or that blacks were being promoted mainly into “flak-catching” positions as intermediaries to keep protest under wraps. “The rift has reached the point where some low-income Negroes are calling any Negro with a decent white-collar job an ‘Uncle Tom,’” Jet magazine reported in 1967.¹⁵⁰

Corporate blacks were fully aware of this tension and often felt they were in a no-win situation. Some reported that other African Americans, including their own children, “tested” them to see whether they were maintaining their “racial fidelity.” “Believe me,” a drained manager stressed, “it’s an effort to maintain my integrity, moving up in management and at the same time being black.”¹⁵¹ A 1967 Operation Breadbasket report indicated fears that integration diluted African American culture and that applicants would need to be like white people. However, white-collar careers were exploding, and “a substantial proportion of these upgraded vocations and job opportunities must be absorbed by Negroes if they are ever to ‘catch up.’”¹⁵² When engaged in negotiations on hiring and promotions with Continental Baking that same year, Jesse Jackson fired off a heated missive to chair of the board R. Newton Laughlin for sending Sam Simmons, whom Jackson termed “Continental’s ‘Negro,’” to a summit. According to Jackson, “it became obvious to us that Mr. Simmons had neither a future within the present structures of Continental nor the power to use and create with the information at his disposal.” Laughlin emphatically objected to Jackson’s portrayal of Simmons, calling him “not a public relations employee but a member of our sales department who has worked his way up to the position of Assistant Sales Manager with responsibilities which include many important accounts. This is far from a dead end job.”¹⁵³ Regardless of Simmons’s actual role, the episode demonstrated the distrust of corporations and the blacks in their employ, even as civil rights groups attempted to place more African Americans in these positions. Activists with Operation PUSH, which effectively pressured companies to hire black managers, simultaneously worried that “the best black minds” were “locked into the job system in the white corporate structure” and unwilling to take on black nationalist objectives.¹⁵⁴ Publications such as Ebony and Negro Digest, while singing the praises of strivers, nearly always posed the question if they were “giving back.”¹⁵⁵ The articles implied a degree of mistrust toward the high achieving, a pointed reminder that they had bigger responsibilities than their white peers.

Many managers insisted that they were advancing both their personal interests and those of the race through their careers. Through their example, black white-collars had defied the erroneous perceptions that the race lacked the necessities to make it in the corporate world, and their groundbreaking actions were an essential, if underappreciated, part of the freedom movement. “My professional life,” Xerox executive Barry Rand audaciously asserted, “was as much a part of the civil rights struggle as the bus boycotts and lunch counter sit-ins of a few years earlier.”¹⁵⁶ Ron Sampson, a Chicago advertising executive, engaged in sit-ins as a student, but now tried to set an example for others by establishing himself professionally. “Quite frankly, I felt like I walked the picket line every morning when I started to work.”¹⁵⁷ In Chicago, 45 percent of high-status blacks belonged to a civil rights organization, the highest percentage of any socioeconomic group.¹⁵⁸ Some of the well-off strongly objected to the assertion that they were not carrying their weight, pointing out that they were the “backbone” of the movement organizationally and financially. “The children think they invented civil rights,” a prominent black Chicagoan sarcastically remarked.¹⁵⁹ A study of sixty black executives and entrepreneurs in 1970 and 1971 found that 47 percent were active in protest movements, and not just with conventional organizations such as the NAACP and Urban League. Almost a quarter of these businesspeople had been involved with more militant groups such as Operation Breadbasket, the Congress of Racial Equality, and the Black Panthers.¹⁶⁰ A Fortune journalist found that many in the black middle class were adopting standpoints far more aggressive than their predecessors, “views sometimes just as bristling and hostile as those held by all but the most extreme of his black brothers.”¹⁶¹

Black managers’ association with black power organizations seemed an unlikely match. However, while whites often correlated black power with violence, most blacks, even those in corporate America, thought of it as the solidification of their communal power.¹⁶² By the mid-1970s the country was suffering from integration exhaustion, and many Americans turned from assimilation toward identity politics.¹⁶³ African Americans in corporate positions were not immune from this shift, especially since white coworkers had consistently resisted integration while blacks were apprehensive over the price of conformity.

If black white-collars were in “the system,” for most of them it continued to be an unnerving existence. Charles Harrison, the first African American manager at Sears, remembered that from the day he was hired until he retired in 1993, “I was always reminded that I could not take my guard down, that I was in a hostile environment every day. Every day!” When materials disappeared from the laboratory, Harrison, despite his ten-year tenure at the firm, was the only executive investigated by an outside detective agency. After two white technicians were discovered as the culprits, Harrison’s embarrassed supervisor gave him his largest pay increase, a bittersweet end to another in a long line of excruciating workplace incidents. Harrison and a black colleague carpooled from their South Side residences to the office. Each morning, prior to entering, they paused and donned imaginary “gasmasks” to mentally prepare themselves for the “toxic” environment ahead.¹⁶⁴

MANAGERIAL DILEMMAS

Despite the endeavors by African American networking organizations, the indirect discrimination of the “shadow corporation” remained a hindrance to black advancement. Critics charged that affirmative action had undermined the merit system by making it “relativistic.”¹⁶⁵ In reality, the black experience in management exposed the phony claims of color-blind merit. Blacks encountered a host of frustrating traps and impediments that had nothing to do with their talents or capabilities. By the mid-1980s, media reports suggested that numerous African Americans were ditching their “dead-end” jobs in corporations.¹⁶⁶ A manager who left a bank to found a consulting firm said, “Capability and performance were important in corporate promotion, but equally important was the old-boy network—and race plays a significant part in limiting access to the network.”¹⁶⁷ Though activists expended a great deal of energy to convince corporations to hire blacks in white-collar positions, the struggles of these employees began again as they reached their desks.

Indeed, the tensions reflected the larger burdens borne by black managers. Activists wanted them to usher large-scale changes into the economic climate of Chicago. Companies hired them mostly to tamp down dissent. The managers themselves were often just trying to survive. In a sense, they emerged at an inopportune time. If they had materialized in the Ebony magazine–era of the long 1950s or the Reagan 1980s, they would have been lauded. Instead, blacks entered corporate America just as black power and calls for racial authenticity were at their height. Dr. James Comer, the son of a steelworker from East Chicago who became a Yale psychologist, contended that more than any other ethnic group, middle-class African Americans were “desperately concerned” about their poor brethren and strongly wanted to do something for the whole community. But because black poverty was structural and the nascent black middle class had neither the capital nor the clout to produce extensive change, “there just isn’t much they can do. . . . There are many who feel that frustration.”¹⁶⁸ While American society threw up repeated obstacles for the black middle class, they also expected more from this group than perhaps any other. Blaming the dormant condition of black Chicago on decisions made by the African American middle class not only fed unrealistic expectations, but ignored the depth of their struggles.