What follows is one chapter in an unfinished history of the United Negro College Fund (which now goes by its acronym UNCF) told from the perspective of a young white woman who became the director of the Fund’s direct mail program in 1974. I was that young white woman and fascinated with the story behind the story, fancied myself Institutional Memory and began seeking the “inner truth.” I figured it had to be there. It was but not in the way I expected. Somewhere along the line, my quest for the eternal verities began to look more like adolescent inquisitiveness than the Institutional Memory which seemed so much more dignified. Let me set the scene. Founded in 1944, the UNCF started out as a predominantly white man’s organization raising money for 27 small, mostly southern, predominantly black colleges and universities. Although successive UNCF executive directors were traditionally black and male (even today no woman has ever been chosen), the organization itself was controlled by a mostly white board of directors (John D. Rockefeller, Jr. their principal angel, was on the board until his death in 1960) and its executive staff was also white and male. A cadre of black women answered the phones, typed and filed, and served as support staff. The UNCF college presidents were mostly consigned to a board of members (a percentage set by the bylaws were directors on what functioned as the main/business board) and usually rubber stamped the policies passed by the “real” board, selected the UNCF executive director (that position was not elevated to president and CEO until Chris Edley arrived on the scene and not until late in his tenure), and argued incessantly over the official solicitation policy that was supposed to demarcate the fundraising zones allocated to the UNCF institutions and those where UNCF’s collective fundraising held sway. Of course, one side or the other was always “cheating” which prompted endless hours of contention and quarrelsome debate at UNCF board meetings.
When Vernon Jordan became executive director, he engineered a radical recasting of UNCF staff. Almost overnight, Black men (women were still a rare sighting) invaded the executive suite. Although Jordan was gone in a little over a year (after the more prestigious Urban League executive director post became vacant), he and his successor transformed the day-to-day operation of the organization. White was mostly out, black mostly in. At the board level, not much changed. The racism (more politely known as lack of access) pervasive in the business community in the late seventies still dictated on whose terms the organization operated. The UNCF corporate board remained white, male, and rich.
After an interregnum in 1972 with Art Fletcher presiding, Christopher Edley, a program officer at the Ford Foundation, ascended to the top spot in 1973. He completed the job of installing a mostly black leadership team including a few women.
When I was hired in 1974, a few months after Chris took over, I became the third white person on the New York staff, the other two (one being a woman) handled UNCF public relations. Shortly after I came on board, a white man, Alan Kirschner, was hired as Edley’s assistant and —rumor had it —his confidant. Alan had another function: he compiled the statistics we used in presenting our cause to potential donors. (You’ll meet him in the excerpt)
The chapter opens as I am arriving at the Hilton Hotel where the meeting of the Budget and Finance Committee of the board is about to begin. Clearly something is afoot and although conspiracy theories and intrigues were the bread and butter of life as a UNCF staffer, this board meeting promised to live up to its billing as the “piece de resistance” of the dark forebodings that had been circulating among the staff. Besides Alan, you will meet Bill Allen another early member of the band of brothers surrounding Edley who became UNCF’s official Cassandra —a prophetic voice that was mostly ignored. The other actors introduce themselves and one presents his version of the founding of UNCF and the event that will give this books its name —Mr. Hoving’s Meeting.
Chapter 15
And all that believed were together and had all things in common.
—Acts 2:44
The lobby of the Hilton was crowded and noisy at 7:00 when I got there. The Budget and Finance Committee meeting was scheduled for 7:30.
“Jane, I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“Hi Alan, Chris asked me to come to the meeting. So here I am.”
He looked at me for a long moment without speaking. He seemed puzzled. “C’mon, we have time for a quick drink.”
They found a seat. Alan found a waitress, and two drinks appeared.
“Any special reason Chris wanted you at this meeting?”
Best not to tell him the truth — that it wasn’t a real invitation just pillow talk. “I think he wanted some of the presidents to meet me. Something about how much money my department spends to make money. You seem puzzled. What’s the matter?”
“Nothing, it’s just kind of odd.”
“Odd?”
“I can’t figure out why he would ask you to attend this meeting.”
“Why? I’m not going to say anything, just listen.”
“For openers, they’ll probably go right into executive session which means committee members only and Chris, if they invite him. So why drag you out here, if you’re not going to be able to see anything?”
“Maybe he didn’t know that when he invited me.”
“He’s known about the trouble for months now. He’s had I don’t know how many conference calls with the presidents. One night last week, he was at the office until after midnight jawing with those guys. Of course, he knew.”
“What’s the big deal? He got caught with his fingers in the cookie jar?”
He gave me a hard look that I hadn’t expected and couldn’t comprehend. “Where did you get that idea?”
I wasn’t going to tell him I just made it up. Maybe if I act mysterious, he’ll spill the beans. “People talk, you know.”
“About?”
“Nothing is ever a secret in this operation.” You’ve been around long enough to know that. They say Chris has his hands full.”
“Isn’t that the truth. Unfortunately, there’s only so much I can say.”
Apparently that wasn’t going to stop him.
“I can tell you one thing, Chris probably won’t show up. He’s making Virgil come in his place.”
“Isn’t that a big mistake? Not showing up. Doesn’t that make it worse?
But he was already on his feet and moving towards the door.
The Budget and Finance Committee was meeting in a medium-sized room that looked like the anteroom of a much larger room. A conference table had been set up. Chairs covered almost every other inch of the floor.
Are they expecting an overflow crowd? The word must have gotten out about Chris being taken to the wood shed. Wouldn’t be much mystery about who let it out? I couldn’t resist a quick glance at Alan.
At 7:35, Chris still hadn’t appeared.
At 7:45, a somewhat flustered Virgil walked in, looked around, and went over to the man Alan had identified as the chairman, said a few words and took a seat at the other end of the table. Slowly the rest of the committee filed in, and at 8:00, the chairman banged the gavel and opened the meeting.
The room was full. All these staff members suddenly developing a burning desire to hear about the financial side of the operation. Yeah, right. Just then Virgil raised his hand and started to speak. But he was talking so softly, barely above a whisper, I could only make out a few words. Something about Chris being unable to attend, sending his regrets yada, yada, yada. The presidents sitting around the table reacted with stony silence.
After about a minute, the chairman spoke up and declared the committee to be in executive session. The room was cleared, and I found herself in the hallway with a dozen or so other staff. Alan hadn’t been ejected.
Bill Allen, the guy I met when I visited the New Jersey office a couple of weeks ago, was standing against the wall, eyes half-closed, but not missing a trick. On an impulse I walked over and touched his arm.
“Bill, remember me? We met in New Jersey a couple of weeks ago.”
He looked a little puzzled, but recovered quickly and flashed that charming smile, “Sure, I remember. How you doing?”
“Good. But I’m a little disappointed. I wanted to see how this committee operates. Now it looks like a wasted trip.
“You and everybody else, darling. The only one who doesn’t seem interested is the boss. Can you beat that?” His laughter was genuine.
“Didn’t Virgil say he was sick?”
“Unless he’s on his deathbed, there’s no way he can be a no-show. Listen, I’m heading to the bar with some other folks. Want to join us?”
For the next two hours, there was a lot of talk, none of it very illuminating. These guys seemed to know less than I did. Bill didn’t say much. I couldn’t help thinking he knew more than all of us put together.
After awhile, everyone left and I was alone with Bill. It was my big chance to do a little detecting. He’s got to be in the information loop. UNCF was the quintessential man’s world. Being anatomically correct around here put you ahead of the curve automatically.
“How about I buy you a night cap?” He glanced at his watch, smiled lazily and accepted.
“Have you heard? I’ve left the New Jersey office. Going to be in New York starting Monday.”
“Congratulations are in order, I guess. What are you going to be doing?”
“Special promotions, you know all the golf and tennis tournaments and the honorary dinners, that kind of stuff. Everything but the telethon. I wouldn’t touch them with a ten foot pole.”
“Too bad, they say television’s the coming thing.”
“Go on, laugh all you want, but Chris wouldn’t be playing hide and seek with the budget boys if he had listened to me”
“What do you have to do with the telethons?”
“Nothing, and that’s the position I advised Chris to take.”
“Maybe he’s got one too many lawyers advising him.” With both Bill and Alan being lawyers and competing for Chris’ attention, it figured there were too many cooks in this particular stew. “Tell me what’s going on, Bill. Does Chris really have his ass in a sling?
“This is as much as I know. It goes back to a meeting Chris had with some well-connected niggers along with a couple of white corporate suits who sold him this bill of goods about the telethons. They told him it would put UNCF on the map, he would be remembered as the executive director who brought riches and recognition to the Fund. They had him expecting a commemorative bust in the lobby.”
“It didn’t work out that way?”
“Furthest thing from it, and coming on the heels of…”
“Well, well, Mr. Allen, what a coincidence. I heard the ladies threatened to strike if they didn’t bring you to New York. And here you are in a fancy hotel in New York City with the prettiest woman in the room. How do you do it?” He gave a mock salute.
I knew I had seen him before. He was in his late sixties or early seventies, a short man with what looked like the vestiges of a muscular frame now gone to fat. He was so light skinned I would never have guessed he was black. Then it came to me. He had been at the budget meeting. He must be one of the presidents. Damn, if only he had waited five more minutes to come over.
“Hey, Dr. Dent, how’re you doing? You guys get out of the meeting in one piece?”
“Yeah, Bill, we managed to work it out. Just takes a little head-banging if you know what I mean.” Bill nodded, and they laughed as though they shared some private joke. “But please don’t keep me in suspense any longer, I think I spied this charming lady at the meeting, at least in the few minutes we had before Dr. Foster kicked you all out.”
“This is Jane, our director of direct mail. Jane, this is Dr. Albert Dent.” That’s funny, I could swear I was the direct mail manager before this evening. When was I promoted to director? Not that it really mattered. I may be a newbie but I learn fast. At UNCF, when men got new titles, they got more money. Women got new titles, period.
“Well, well, well, so you’re the lady we love to hate?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Some of the lads on Budget and Finance think direct mail spends too much and brings in too little. It’s an agenda item every time we meet. There’s some who believe we’d make as much if we put the money in the bank and let the interest accumulate.”
“Hasn’t UNCF always done direct mail?”
“Far as I know. And some have carried on about it from the beginning. They don’t think we ought to trouble folks, just let them give when the spirit moves them.”
“You’re kidding?”
“Sure am, problem is some of them,” he gestured around the bar where some of the presidents were sitting, “aren’t.”
“But this isn’t business time, it’s drinking time. Who’s going to join me?” Bill?”
“Sorry, I’m out. I have to get on home. My wife’s at a meeting. We have a babysitter, and I promised to be home by 10:00.
Why is Bill in such a hurry to get out of here?
“Okay, but you,” he pointed at me, “you’re not going to leave a poor man to drink alone, are you?”
I’d love to join you.”
It wasn’t hard to get him talking about the old days. After all he had been there from the beginning. I wonder how he feels sitting here, with waiters flying around to get him a drink, knowing, when they started UNCF, he probably wouldn’t have been able to sit here at all, certainly not with me. He was a comfortable person to be with, charming, but I could feel his pulsating energy just beneath the surface.
“So tell me, my dear, what was your major in college?
“I majored in women’s history. Why?”
“I envy you. My career path led me to the thankless job of college president at a black university.”
“I don’t know why you say thankless. You look like you’ve survived pretty well.”
He grinned at me and touched his potbelly, “I didn’t say I had taken an oath of poverty. But running a perpetually broke black college is one of the most tiring jobs on earth. You’ve been with the Fund long enough to know what an almost daily struggle it is to keep the doors open.”
“You must be real proud of they way it turned out. Being part of something that’s important to so many people.
“Yes, I am. I believe everyone has one point in their lives, a defining moment if you will, and it’s at that point where everything they are, everything they believe in, and most important, everything they hope for come together. That’s what being part of the College Fund has done for me, given me a defining moment. I am truly blessed.”
“I’d love to know how the Fund got started.”
He leaned back, took a sip, and I realized he was starting another martini. How had he managed to order it without letting on?
“The story I’m about to tell you has three characters — me, Dr. Fred Patterson, UNCF’s founder and Bill Trent, our first executive director. We were only a small part of the educators in the late thirties and early forties determined to start a fundraising operation to educate our children. One of our prime inspirations, you will be pleased to know, was a woman, Mary Mcleod Bethune. It was 1944, and America was in the throes of a world war. Victory in Europe was imminent. The Japanese were still posing a major threat in the Pacific. At home, there was war of a different kind. Segregation was a way of life for hundreds of thousands of Negroes, even those fighting and dying for our country.”
“A high school education was beyond the grasp of most black folks in the south. As far as college, even if a young person wanted to go to college and could find the money, where would he or she go? There were only a few schools that would accept Black kids. All major and most of the minor colleges were whites only. The reason I was able to go to college was my mother. She knew I’d never be more than a sharecropper if I didn’t get an education. I don’t remember my dad. He died was I a baby. My mom was a maid, they call them domestic workers today, but in order to send me to college she worked two or three other jobs. With her encouragement, I made good grades and got into one of the few black colleges in the south, Morehouse, today a UNCF school. After graduation, I went to New Orleans and got a job at Dillard University, another black school. You know what my first job was? Business manager. Six years later, I was honored to be named president. As I said, there had always been a few black colleges in the south, going back to 1850. There were twenty-seven of them in 1944.”
“That’s not a whole lot.”
“No, it isn’t,” he agreed, “but it was better than nothing.”
“These schools were struggling. Most of them were housed in decrepit old buildings badly needing repair. One of the schools was in an old, railroad car on a siding. There was another one in an abandoned plantation. Two things the schools had in common — money, nowhere near enough of that, and debts, way too many of them.”
“With a war on, things must have been pretty tough.”
“Ah, but we had a secret weapon.”
“What was that?” Another drink. His third martini, and I was halfway through my first glass of wine.
“John D. Rockefeller, Jr. It happened like this. Fred and I were presidents of two colleges and Bill was a government official in the Roosevelt administration. Before that, he had taught at one of our schools. Fred had come up with the idea of forming an organization of black schools to serve as our fundraising arm and had been working to get the schools to join. Bill and I got involved in the planning stage. We figured, and as it turned out we were right, one organization, made up of twenty-seven schools, was a much more powerful persuader in the white business community than twenty-seven small, struggling, unknown schools. Separately we had no clout at all. But as an organization of black schools, we had a much better chance. Men like Mr. Rockefeller could support one single organization, ours, and be supporting the academic dreams of thousands of kids. And support us he did. If our cause could be said to have a patron saint, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. was it.”
“How did he get involved?”
“Fred Patterson served on an advisory board with Mr. Rockefeller once and managed to get him interested in our fledgling organization.”
It doesn’t take a math degree to figure out why rich men like Rockefeller would find this an appealing idea. Of course I wouldn’t mention it to Dr. Dent. Then again he probably knew. More like an opportunity. What better way to be on the right side of the civil rights debate without risking anything? The bonus was a well-publicized show of public giving so helpful for burnishing one’s philanthropic image. I suddenly remembered a photograph I had found in an old UNCF file. It puzzled me at the time. Rockefeller was sitting on a chair with a little black child on his knee and he was giving her a dime.
“How did Mr. Rockefeller become your patron saint?”
“Before I can answer that, you have to understand the power of money and the men who have it. The big, glaring hole in our dream to found a national organization was money. For openers, without money we didn’t have the power to require our members to do the things they had to do to get the Fund off the ground, much less take care of our pressing financial needs. What we wanted was the realization by our members that they must sacrifice a little of their authority and independence for the good of the whole body. In a perfect world, we would all do that automatically to achieve the benefits a large and powerful organization can bring to its parts. However, as you know, this isn’t a perfect world. Far from it. Sometimes to make people do what’s in their own best interest, you have to be in a more powerful position. That usually involves money.”.
“Mr. Rockefeller’s money.”
“And others. For us, it was seed money. With him giving us virtually unlimited financial support, we could get moving, rally the troops, get the Fund up and running. Build credibility.” He made an expansive gesture with his hands, “and then we could move on to step two.”
“Which was?”
“Look we started with a mission —affordable quality education for our children at institutions we controlled. Control was the key. Could we have tapped into state-run colleges and universities and used the money we raised to establish special divisions that would accept our children? It was an idea we considered. I couldn’t see it. We had enough segregated facilities, particularly in the South. It didn’t make any sense to erect new barriers to peace and harmony between the races. I’m not even sure the tenor of race relations at the time would have made such a deal possible. But we never went far enough to find out.
“Wait a minute, Dr. Dent, there’s something I don’t understand.”
He looked puzzled.
“I can understand why you might think setting up a college within a college specifically for black kids was perpetuating segregation. But to go and set up all these separate schools. What difference does it make whether these schools are independent or part of a larger institution? If only black kids are welcome, doesn’t that get right back to segregated schools?”
I didn’t give him a chance to answer because I had a more important question. “There’s something I want to ask you that I think is related to what you’re talking about. Last week, we got a donation from someone who had received one of our solicitations. Inside the envelope was a check for $1000, which was pretty good, the part that wasn’t so good was the note attached to the check. ‘Dear UNCF, Please accept this check so all the colored kids in Queens will go to one of your schools, and my kid can go to Queens College with his own kind.’ I thought it was terrible so I took it to Chris and asked him if we should send the money back.”
“Why did you think Chris should give the money back?”
“With a note like that? He was an out and out racist. It’s like blood money. I couldn’t see it.”
“See what? Accepting the money?”
“Yes.”
“Let me see if I have this right. You objected because the gift was not properly motivated.
“Yes.”
“What did Chris say?”
“He said he wished every racist in New York would send in a $1000 check. We’d make our goal and then some.”
“What did you think of that answer?
“I thought it was wrong. But he’s the boss. He even said he’d like to write the guy a personal thank you, which struck me as really over the top.”
“Do you think we have lived our whole lives as Negroes and don’t understand that most of the money we get is, as you call it, blood money? Look, I have the greatest admiration for Mr. Rockefeller. Because of both his money and his advice, we’ve always made smart business decisions. He bought us our first building in New York. Now we’re on our second, and it’s already worth millions more than we paid for it. Despite my gratitude, I am neither stupid nor blind. When it really comes down to it, John D, like your friend in Queens, thought of us as colored boys. If he didn’t come right out and say it or treat us with anything other than courtesy or respect, there was always someone else around to remind us where we belonged in the grand scheme of things.”
“Let me tell you a little story and you’ll see what I mean. It was 1943. Rockefeller invited us to meet him at the Waldorf. That’s where he stayed when he was in New York city. So off we went, Trent, Patterson, and I. We were very excited as I recall. The plan for the College Fund had been coming together. We had drawn up a governing structure and by-laws for the non-profit corporation we were going to create. We had worked hard and were very proud of ourselves and eager to go over the whole thing with him.”
“We got to the hotel a little before 3:00. Before we even got to the desk, we were accosted by this young bellhop, ‘Anything I can help you boys with?’ His tone was pleasant enough, but you never know. I didn’t want to make a scene. So I tried to move around him and get to the desk. But he blocked the way. Finally Fred Patterson intervened, and told the kid we had an appointment with Mr. Rockefeller. He couldn’t have been more surprised if we told him the world was going to end in seven minutes. I’m not sure he believed us but wisely decided to let the desk clerk make the call. It was wartime and the factories were booming, but cushy jobs like his were still hard to find. That must have been what went through his mind when he pointed to the desk clerk and scurried back to his station.
By the time we got to the desk, the clerk already had the phone in his hand. We heard him say ‘Mr. Rockefeller, there are three colored gentlemen here to see you.’ There was a pause. You could tell he was getting nervous, beads of perspiration forming on his forehead. ‘I can send them up in the service elevator, sir.’ This time the phone seemed to crackle with Mr. Rockefeller’s response. ‘I know who you are sir, but those are the rules. I’d get fired if I let them take the passenger elevator.’ This time the phone seemed to be trying to jerk itself out of his hand so explosive was the force of the words coming from the other end. ‘I’m very sorry, sir. Yes sir, I’ll tell them.’ We could just about make out the sound of the clear, slightly high-pitched voice coming out of the phone. But we couldn’t hear what he was actually saying. ‘Yes, sir, I’ll be sure to let them know. I am…’ but the phone had gone dead in his ear.
He put it down, his hands visibly shaking, pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his face, which was lined with perspiration. “If you gentlemen would care to wait. Mr. Rockefeller will be done shortly.”
Wouldn’t you know it, less than five minutes later, the old gentleman himself appeared in the lobby in his smoking jacket and bedroom slippers. He beckoned to us and the four of us rode up to his penthouse suite in the service elevator.” He chuckled softly.
“Is that the best he could do? I mean he was one of the richest and most powerful men in the world and he let a desk clerk boss him around? Shouldn’t he have tried harder?”
“Funny thing about racism. It operates like a chain of command. The desk clerk was following orders. His superior was following orders, and so on up the chain. They were all following orders, the orders of a democratic society that couldn’t get it right when it came to ‘liberty and justice for all.’” He signaled the waitress for another drink.
That must be his fifth or sixth. So what? He probably drinks a whole lot less than the corporate white suits lolling around the bar.
“Rockefeller couldn’t make segregation go away, not even for the short time it took us to go up to his suite. And don’t forget, we’re talking about New York city, not Birmingham or Mobile. It would take another two decades before we started to make some headway below the Mason Dixon Line.”
“How did that make you feel,” I couldn’t help myself, “putting you on the service elevator as though you were laundry?”
“I guess we had learned by that time to keep our eyes on the ball. Being consigned to the freight elevator wasn’t important. We weren’t trying to reform the world, we wanted to help a generation of black kids get an education and not have to struggle the way we did. Knowing what we wanted made it easier to ignore the small stuff. You want to hear the final irony? In the end, what happened paid off for us in a way that would shape the future of our organization and guarantee its longevity. Right after that little scene, Mr. Rockefeller announced he was buying a building in New York city for us and the Urban League. The way I figured it – like all great man, he couldn’t bear to let his weaknesses, the few things he couldn’t control, show. So he needed to do something quickly to wipe it away.”
“So God does reward good deeds?”
“God, Mr. Rockefeller, you know in those days some people didn’t think there was a lot of difference between them.”
“But sometimes even the Waldorf, grand old dame of New York hotels, went overboard, and the results were laughable. Let me tell you another quick story and then,” he looked at his wristwatch, “I’ll see that you get home.”
“Where was I? Oh, yes, the catastrophe at the Waldorf. We had been in business for about a year. It was April, 1945 and the Fund’s first annual meeting was approaching. We knew it had to be in New York but we also knew that it had to be handled with great care. Just making travel arrangements for our members was a full time job. At that time, most of them were southern country folk who had never been in any city, much less a big city like New York. To guarantee good attendance, we hired buses to get everyone up here. Since it was our first meeting, we knew the bigger the turnout the better. We even found places for them to stay. In those days most of our folks couldn’t have afforded a New York city hotel room even if they had been able to find one that would accept them. The problem we had the most trouble solving was where to hold the meeting. Sure we could have gone up to Harlem, but that didn’t fit our image. We didn’t belong in Harlem for the same reason the NAACP did. Our money was coming from rich, white corporations and wealthy, influential white individuals as it does to this day. We knew how important it was to hold our first meeting in one of ‘their’ places. That was proving to be more difficult than even we battle-scarred veterans had imagined. It wasn’t that we were looking for free accommodations. We had raised a lot of money that year. Our staff was small, most of the work was done by volunteers and even Dr. Trent, our first executive director, only made a pittance. In fact that first year, I’m not sure we paid him at all.
“Times sure have changed.” I couldn’t resist but if he heard me he gave no sign.
“We were prepared to spend whatever it took. Unfortunately, no one wanted to rent a meeting room to a bunch of Negroes. Because we were desperate, we decided to appeal to one of our most generous donors. Not Mr. Rockefeller, he had done so much already, we didn’t think it right to make another request. So, we went to Mr. Hoving.” Seeing my blank look, he added, “Mr Hoving was part of what they used to call the first families of New York. He owned Tiffany’s and a lot of other real estate. Both Rockefeller and Hoving had been in our corner from the beginning. We owed most of our success the first year to the two of them. But we didn’t want to go to the well too often. When it got to within a month of our meeting, and we still had no place to meet, we had to act fat.
So we arranged a meeting with him and explained our dilemma. He listened very carefully, considered a moment and then said quietly, ‘Would a meeting room at the Waldorf suit your purpose?’ We were absolutely dumbfounded. We had never dreamed of such a piece of good fortune dropping in our lap. The Waldorf was the most prestigious hotel in New York and maybe in the world at the time. For a black organization, like ours, to have our most important meeting of the year there was simply breathtaking. I’m not sure we answered the poor man. He must have seen three pairs of jaws dropping and three mouths gaping. He stood up then, shook our hands, led us to the door and said, ‘Consider it done.’”
“Wow!”
“Wow is right. We couldn’t believe it. We kept shaking each other to make sure we were wide-awake, not dreaming. Unfortunately, our euphoria didn’t last long. Shortly after, like a bucket of cold water dumped unceremoniously on our heads, we learned generosity has its ugly face. The day before the meeting, we got a call from the hotel manager. It seems there was quite a controversy brewing over our name.”
“What about your name? Didn’t United Negro College Fund turn them on?”
“it wasn’t that exactly. Back in those days, the hotel had a big board in the front lobby that announced the activities taking place in the hotel, gave room numbers, meeting times, the usual information for people attending the various functions. It seems America’s premiere hotel didn’t want the word Negro mixing with the names of white organizations. After all, as the manager somewhat huffily told me, ‘no offense, but we have our image to consider.’”
“But according to Mr. Hoving, you had every right to be there. Didn’t he tell you that? Didn’t he give you his personal guarantee you could hold your meeting there?”
“Right and believe me, I mentioned that fact to the manager whose response, was quite ingenious, ‘Mr. Hoving said you could have your meeting at the Waldorf, but he didn’t promise to publicize it.’”
“Why didn’t you give Mr. Hoving a call and get him to run interference for you?”
Then she got it. Of course, they couldn’t go back to Hoving. In 1945, super rich men like Hoving dispensed their largesse on their own terms. One didn’t go back to the well to complain about problems with the largesse.
“But where there’s a will, there’s a way. In fact, the general manager himself came up with it, much to his chagrin it would later turn out. He decided to rename our meeting ‘Mr. Hoving’s Meeting.’ Getting rid of that objectionable word in such a tidy fashion seemed like a fine plan to him. He didn’t ask our opinion.
“Perhaps you can imagine what happened. The morning of the meeting, the lobby of the elegant Waldorf was literally crawling with hundreds of Negroes whose simple homespun clothing and old fashioned straw hats to say nothing of their color marked them as oddities among that well-dressed, white crowd. And because they had no idea where they were going with no signs to help them out, all of them were milling around the lobby. I heard later some of the more adventuresome approached guests asking where the Negro meeting was being held.” He chuckled at the reminiscence.
“Certainly none of them connected the unknown Mr. Hoving to their meeting. So it came to pass rather than suffer the indignity of a discreet little sign announcing our meeting, which hardly anyone but our folks would have noticed, the inventive general manager had a swarm of Negroes all over his lobby advertising the meeting to all and sundry. It was actually a public relations coup for us. For the poor fellow whose plan had gone awry, the result was unfortunately far from satisfactory.
“That, my dear, is the saga of Mr. Hoving’s meeting. Now, I’ll find you a taxi and make sure you get home safe.”
As they threaded their way through the lobby, he stopped at a small couch near the elevators. “I’m going up to my room to get my overcoat. You’re welcome to come along, or wait here if you prefer.”
Was he kidding? “I’ll come along, if it’s okay.”
We took the elevator to the twenty-fourth floor. As we were walking down the hallway to his room, a group of distinguished-looking black men suddenly appeared walking toward us. Dr. Dent nodded his head and walked by them. I don’t know what made me do it, but I turned around to stare at their retreating backs. They were standing in the middle of the hall watching us. As I looked, one man dislodged himself from the little tableau and walked towards us.
“Al,” he said. He was about Dr. Dent’s age, a tall, exceedingly thin gentlemen, light-skinned, with very Anglo-looking facial features, like Dr. Dent’s. “Good to see you. I just got in myself, but I gather you’ve been here awhile.” He glanced at me, treated Dr. Dent to a wide smile and just might have winked at him. I couldn’t be sure.. “Excuse me, my dear, but I don’t think we’ve met. My name is Bill Trent.”
Since Dr. Dent didn’t seem inclined to do the honors, I stuck out my hand and introduced myself. By this time, the other four men were at the elevator and appeared to be waiting for their companion. He pressed my hand warmly, looked at Dr. Dent with an expression I couldn’t fathom and hurried down the hall to rejoin his friends.
“Isn’t he the man you were telling me about? The first executive director?”
He didn’t answer until we got to the door to his room. He opened it and stood aside so I could go in first.
“Yes, that’s Bill Trent. Would you like to use the powder room before we go?”
I shook my head.
“Would you excuse me then? I’ll just be a minute.” He disappeared into the bathroom.
After awhile I heard the toilet flush. A few minutes later he came out, picked up his coat, “Are you ready?” he said quite formally.
We got to the line in front of the taxi stand. It was awfully cold out there and his overcoat didn’t look too warm. At his age he could get pneumonia waiting for a cab. So I took the bull by the horns. “Thank you for a wonderful evening. I really enjoyed myself. You don’t have to wait. I’ll be fine, There are lots of people around. I know you’re not used to this weather.”
“Nonsense, I said I would see you home and that’s exactly what I intend to do. Unless you don’t want me to?”
I didn‘t have any trouble decoding that sentence. He wasn’t talking about the weather or the line to get a taxi.
“That’s very kind of you. I’d like that.”
I never saw him again. Not to talk to. Right after that disastrous board meeting, company policy on staff attendance changed from ‘y’all come down’ to ‘we’ll let you know if we need you.’
They’re all gone now, Dent, Trent, and Patterson. And something is missing. I’m not sure what, some sense of living history, of a time when civil rights had a broad palette of shadings and colorations. These guys were on the cutting edge of bringing opportunity and equality to a big chunk of Americans. But they didn’t receive a whole lot of accolades. Even before they died, their MO was called into question, their approach denounced as too slow, too deliberate, and too permissive. They were all but dismissed in the context of the “real” civil rights struggle, the one fought in the trenches. I don’t agree. I saw the vitality, the sexual power I believed infused their message with great presence. Maybe that’s because I wasn’t the one waiting on opportunity or access or equality.
