Our Kind of People Read online

  Our Kind of People

  INSIDE AMERICA’S BLACK UPPER CLASS

  LAWRENCE OTIS GRAHAM

  To my brilliant wife, Pamela Thomas-Graham.

  Thank you for making my dreams come true.

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION TO THE

  HARPERPERENNIAL EDITION

  PREFACE

  CHAPTER 1 The Origins of the Black Upper Class

  CHAPTER 2 Jack and Jill: Where Elite Black Kids Are Separated from the Rest

  CHAPTER 3 The Black Child Experience: The Right Cotillions, Camps, and Private Schools

  CHAPTER 4 Howard, Spelman, and Morehouse: Three Colleges That Count

  CHAPTER 5 The Right Fraternities and Sororities

  CHAPTER 6 The Links and the Girl Friends: For Black Women Who Govern Society

  CHAPTER 7 The Boulé, the Guardsmen, and Other Groups for Elite Black Men

  CHAPTER 8 Vacation Spots for the Black Elite

  CHAPTER 9 Black Elite in Chicago

  PHOTOGRAPHIC INSERTS

  CHAPTER 10 Black Elite in Washington, D.C.

  CHAPTER 11 Black Elite in New York City

  CHAPTER 12 Black Elite in Memphis

  CHAPTER 13 Black Elite in Detroit

  CHAPTER 14 Black Elite in Atlanta

  CHAPTER 15 Other Cities for the Black Elite: Nashville, New Orleans, Tuskegee, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia

  CHAPTER 16 Passing for White: When the “Brown Paper Bag Test” Isn’t Enough

  AFTERWORD

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PHOTOGRAPHY CREDITS

  SEARCHABLE TERMS

  OTHER BOOKS BY LAWRENCE OTIS GRAHAM

  CREDITS

  COPYRIGHT

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  INTRODUCTION

  to the HarperPerennial Edition

  Although I spent six years researching Our Kind of People, I could never have been prepared for the controversy that it elicited from various groups upon its initial publication. Although there is a constant cry for diversity in our media, our literature, our history books, and in our communities, it became obvious to me that there are certain narrow stereotypes—even within an integrated society—that people are simply unwilling to relinquish. The stereotype of the working-class black or impoverished black is one that whites, as well as blacks, have come to embrace and accept as an accurate and complete account of the black American experience. Our Kind of People upset that stereotype. And it upset many people—particularly blacks—who have been taught never to challenge a stereotype that we had been saddled with since slavery.

  For many people, this book is a political or social hot potato in the sense that even though most blacks talk about the issues of elitism, racial passing, class structure, and skin color within the black community, they don’t want to see it broadcast in a book. For a few black members of the media, the topic struck too close to their own past experiences of being excluded by snobbish members of the black elite. Some of them quietly told me that they were glad that I wrote the book because it was disproving the stereotypes, but that they could not publicly support the book because their white audiences would find the concept of rich, educated blacks too threatening and because their black audiences would find the subject too painful.

  An extensive national tour uncovered many surprises during media interviews, personal appearances, and Internet dialogues, as well as at high-end cocktail parities.

  A short time after Our Kind of People was first published, there was a series of discussion panels set up in different cities so that members of the black elite could come together and share their views on the book and address the controversy that had arisen around the issue of class within the black community. Each of these panel discussions was preceded by a somewhat formal cocktail party, where guests—many of them members of old-guard social clubs or prominent families—had the opportunity to mingle with old friends as well as representatives from the media. Although the largest event took place at the Harvard Club in New York City, the most memorable one occurred on a hot spring evening in Los Angeles.

  “You’d better not show your face in Martha’s Vineyard this summer,” snapped an attractive Yale graduate as she remarked how she and some of her other black friends were responding to the controversy around Our Kind of People. She’d evidently seen me in Oak Bluffs in prior years and had heard that many people were disturbed either because their names hadn’t appeared in the book or because they believed that wealthy blacks shouldn’t be talking about their accomplishments.

  I felt both groups were being unreasonable and I told the woman so. “Some black folks may be uncomfortable to learn that there are several generations of elite blacks who live in a separate world, but like white people, blacks also have to learn to accept the facts in our history,” I remarked. “I don’t think the black upper-class crowd should be ashamed of its success any more than the WASP elite, Italian elite, or Jewish elite.”

  “You opened a real can of worms,” another woman remarked as she stood by listening. “Folks don’t want to hear about rich blacks unless we’re playing basketball, singing rap music, or doing comedy on TV.”

  As casual as that remark was, it was actually an accurate assessment of many black people’s response to a book that I had spent six years researching. While a few whites expressed amazement that there had been black millionaires and black members of Congress as far back as the late 1800s (one white TV anchor told me on live television that if I had not displayed photos of the well-known entrepreneur Madam C. J. Walker and her family’s 20,000-square-foot 1902 mansion in New York, he would never have believed that a black millionaire existed at the turn of the century), most were fascinated by how closely class structure and elitism among blacks mirrored that found in other racial and ethnic groups.

  A large number of blacks, however, were not so comfortable with the 120-year history of the black upper class in America. Many with ties to these families, organizations, schools, fraternities, or summer resorts accepted this history with pride—so long as they did not have to admit their status in the company of non-elite blacks.

  “I don’t want the other black folks in Atlanta to think I’m looking down on them,” explained a millionaire surgeon who attempted to avoid association with the old-guard clubs, schools, and institutions whenever they were mentioned in mixed company.

  And this is why I have concluded that although every racial, ethnic, and religious group in the United States claims to want a piece of the American dream, there is no group that apologizes more for its success than black people. The cultural identity or integrity of a black millionaire rap star, basketball player, or TV performer will never be questioned. But an equally wealthy black professional with an upper-class background and a good education will earn the label of a “sellout” or a “Negro trying to be white.”

  The black Yale grad with the long mane of hair in Los Angeles was aware of that fact when she warned me about showing up on the beaches of Martha’s Vineyard. In the cities that had preceded L.A., the people attending these gatherings had represented a rather insular circle. They were members of old-guard families and social clubs like the Links or Boulé; individuals who had attended the schools, camps, and cotillions that had been written about; and wealthy physicians or businesspeople who understood and embraced the world captured in the book.

  But something about this gathering in L.A. seemed different—and intriguing. For the first time, there seemed to be people present who did not come from the world of the black elite. Yes, they were black, but they were not uniformly wealthy or old-guard. Since the book was gaining attention through its selection by the Book-of-the-Month Club, its appearance on various bestse
ller lists, numerous magazine excerpts, and many positive reviews and features in the New York Times and the Washington Post, it was attracting an audience beyond the initial wealthy black and wealthy white readers. It was hitting the mainstream.

  “Lawrence, I don’t think these are our kind of people in this room,” remarked a Los Angeles doctor friend of mine who had grown up with me in Jack and Jill and had summered in Martha’s Vineyard.

  “I’m hearing some pretty nasty stuff from these folks,” remarked a friend of my mother’s, who had brought some of her friends from the Links. She moved closer to me. “Some of us are leaving, so I don’t know if you really want to be here.”

  That very week, the Los Angeles Times had run a front page feature story about the book and about the wealthy black people and organizations that had been profiled in it. Although it spoke glowingly about high-powered black Angelenos, the article and surrounding discussion clearly did not sit well with certain wealthy blacks who had not been included. And the middle-class blacks were enraged to discover that there was a circle of elite black people, institutions, and activities that excluded them. If talk about the right debutante cotillions and best black schools and summer camps hadn’t already offended them, the accompanying photo of me standing on Beverly Hills’ Wilshire Boulevard convinced them that the black elite was existing completely outside the mainstream black world. Of course this was not entirely true.

  “Nobody wants to hear about rich black people,” one angry attendee remarked.

  “How come none of these supposed black folks are Baptists?” another asked.

  “Why are all the people in the book light skinned?”

  “What kind of black man is gonna go to Harvard anyway?”

  I told him that the black intellectual W. E. B. Du Bois graduated from Harvard in the 1890s. He didn’t want to hear it.

  And neither did the members of the black elite who suddenly discovered that they were surrounded by middle-class and working-class blacks who were there to make the rest of us apologize for a class structure we had not created. A prominent author who sat with me on the panel suddenly announced that she could stay for only the first five minutes of our impending sixty-minute discussion. Rather than discuss her experience of being a black woman at Wellesley in the 1940s and her experience of growing up in a well-connected, light-complexioned black elite family, she neutralized the angry crowd by trotting out an unconvincing I’m-just-a-down-home-sister-like-the-rest-of-you introduction. After a final statement that included such trite phrases as “giving back to the people… we’re all the same… each one teach one… we’re all in this together… don’t forget where you came from,” the blond-haired Wellesley graduate ran for the door with the security that her Links and AKA friends would keep her secret.

  To my left was another member of the black elite who pulled a “one-eighty” at the last minute. Rather than hightail it to the door like our fellow panelist and a few of the other “club” people, she instead pandered to the audience with a revised personal résumé and an irrelevant speech on how awful it was to even be talking about the black elite when kids were being shot in the streets. Despite the fact that the hosts had invited the woman to the panel because of her academic credentials and her ties to one of the city’s most aristocratic black millionaire families, she refused to speak to the topic of the evening.

  By the end of the discussion, the room had divided itself into “nonelites” who hated black elites, black elites who remained silent about their backgrounds, and black elites who reinvented their backgrounds to placate the hostile attendees who felt that black people had no business owning summer homes or going to medical school.

  I am sure I am partly responsible for the intensity of the response surrounding the book. Although I had not expected the reaction, the very first lines of the book upset many readers, including some of the most powerful black celebrities in the country. I should have explained the genesis of the opening lines, “Bryant Gumbel is, but Bill Cosby isn’t. Lena Horne is, but Whitney Houston isn’t….” They were not my words, but remarks that were made to me as I traveled from one city to the next asking old-guard blacks to tell me which famous black celebrities from their city were members of old-guard families. In Philadelphia, Bill Cosby’s hometown, I asked wealthy black socialites if the well-credentialed and wealthy Dr. Cosby was in their crowd. They told me, “No, he’s not our kind of people, but his wife, Camille [because of her Spelman College background and her light complexion], is.” In Detroit, I asked about Diana Ross. In Brooklyn, I asked about Lena Horne. In Chicago and New Orleans, I asked about Bryant Gumbel. Elite Detroiters told me that despite her current wealth, Ross was not accepted because of her less-privileged family background. The Horne and Gumbel families were “in” because of their families’ relative wealth, academic ties, and connections. These conclusions were handed to me by others. They were not conclusions that I drew for myself.

  Since the initial publication of the book, a certain amount of intellectual honesty has returned to the discussion of Our Kind of People and the black upper class. I have seen that more people are able to remove themselves and their personal experiences from the debate, while placing a greater focus on the facts that have been revealed through this social history. The attacks that were launched through anonymous letters and email have surely been outnumbered by the positive feedback and continued interest that has been elicited through reading groups, college courses, and panel presentations focusing on the black upper class.

  As an increasing number of individuals have discussed this book and its subject matter, they have moved beyond the stereotypes that they had embraced around the issues of race and class. It has now become obvious that people are prepared to accept a broader definition of what it means to be black in America. It should be gratifying for all of us to discover that one can hold on to one’s unique culture, history, and identity and yet still share in the American dream.

  Lawrence Otis Graham

  PREFACE

  My decision to write a book about the black upper class was made several years ago, while I was in my first year at Harvard Law School. It was the result of an awkward but memorable encounter that I had during lunch with one of the country’s most successful businessmen.

  It was the mid-1980s, and the businessman was Reginald Lewis, the wealthiest black man in America. A Harvard Law alumnus who was then only forty-two years old, Lewis had recently purchased the $55 million McCall Pattern Company in a leveraged buyout and had begun appearing in national business articles. We had met several months earlier during a visit that he and his young daughter, Leslie, had made to the campus, and since that time, he had been offering me occasional academic and career advice.

  None of us knew it at that moment, but within three years, Lewis was to become many times richer through his 1987 purchase of Beatrice Foods, the $2.5 billion international packaged goods company, in what was at that time the largest leveraged buyout in U.S. history. Within the next six years, he and his wife, Loida, would amass an enormous art collection, as well as homes in Paris and East Hampton and on New York’s Fifth Avenue. He would also give $3 million to Harvard Law School, $1 million to Howard University, $2 million to the NAACP, and hundreds of thousands to many other institutions and charities.

  But on this particular afternoon, in 1984, we left his office at 99 Wall Street and headed for India House, a private club on Hanover Square in the financial district. We chatted about his role as chairman and owner of the 114-year-old sewing pattern company, his rising profile within the mostly white business world, and the Park Avenue law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton, and Garrison, a firm he wanted me to consider once I left Harvard.

  Then he changed the subject.

  “Now I need your advice on something,” Lewis said, with his perpetually furrowed brow even more pronounced.

  “Sure,” I responded, even though I was quite certain that there was almost nothing about which I could counsel th
is man.

  “You’ve grown up around upper-class whites, you’ve attended white schools, and you are comfortable around wealthy whites, yet you still seem to be balanced from a black perspective.”

  I shrugged.

  “I’m saying that you seem to also have a black orientation that lets you mix among blacks and whites comfortably. I have two daughters and I want them to do that.”

  I suddenly knew where he was taking this conversation. Reginald Lewis was becoming wealthier and more powerful each year. Increasingly, with each new business deal, he was working, socializing, and living less among black people.

  “I didn’t grow up wealthy, but my daughters are growing up that way,” he said while tapping his cigar into a porcelain ashtray, “and I don’t want them to grow away from their black heritage.”

  I nodded with understanding.

  “They don’t interact with working-class or middle-class black kids, and I’m afraid they may get rejected by the white kids.” He shook his head with mild frustration. “I’m thinking there needs to be someplace where they can meet other well-to-do black kids and not feel caught in between two worlds and rejected by both.”

  Lewis knew that my family did not have the incredible wealth or contacts he was amassing. But through our past conversations, he also knew that I had long-term relations with the well-to-do blacks I had grown up with and known all my life.