Battling Racism -- More than 30 Years Ago

While my newspaper colleagues examine racism inside and outside their profession, I can’t help but think I went through something very similar more than 30 years ago.

I first crossed paths with Jessica Hughes in April 1985 when I called seeking advice about where to host a bachelor party in Philadelphia.  She was a United Press International broadcast sales executive while I was a UPI newspaper sales executive in Dallas.

 

Back then, UPI was a leading competitor to The Associated Press and Reuters, serving hundreds of newspapers, radio and television stations around the world with breaking news reports from its bureaus across the United States and the globe.

 

Later that year, after transferring to Philadelphia, I met Jessica for the first time, face to face.  Prior to our meeting, I pictured an erudite, mainline Philadelphia lady.  

 

She was African American, and it was surprising because UPI did not have many, if any, African Americans in its sales ranks in the 1980s.

 

Jessica was quite graceful and about 12 years my senior. She was also a single mother and caring for her aging mother.

 

A year later, after becoming her boss, we made sales calls together in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, visiting a number of newspapers and television and radio stations. During our trips, she talked about some of her previous experiences, including setting up appointments with people she never met and listening to their racist jokes.

 

She mentioned their surprise – actually the shock across their face – when they met her face to face for the first time.  Never did it occur to them, because of how well-spoken she was, they were talking with an African American.

 

Jessica never said anything. She was far too professional. She went about representing UPI gracefully and professionally.

 

In March 1987, a few months shy of my 25^th birthday, with my new boss, taking him to meet a top-paying client, I told him I was resigning at the end of April to pursue my MBA at Northwestern University.  He inquired who should replace me.  

 

We discussed the likely candidates, and when he asked about Jessica, I said, based on previous conversations with her about my intention to leave, I wasn’t sure she wanted the job.

 

“That’s good,” he replied.  “Because UPI can’t afford to be represented by a black woman in Pennsylvania.”

 

I didn’t react to what he said but thought she already is. In time, she applied for my position, and I enthusiastically endorsed her application.

 

Weeks later, as my time at UPI was coming to an end, Jessica's status was unsettled. She wasn’t sure where she stood with UPI’s senior leaders. Eventually, they hired someone outside of UPI to replace me – another white man.

 

A year later, after moving to Chicago, a former UPI colleague said Jessica was looking for me.  I promptly called her.  She was pursuing a racial discrimination lawsuit against UPI and asked if I would give a deposition. Absolutely, I said.

 

I contacted her attorney and gave one over the phone, specifically mentioning what my former boss said about the reason Jessica couldn’t replace me. The smoking gun, as the cliché goes, was out of the bag.

 

A year later, I took three harassing phone calls from UPI’s attorneys.  Each time, they attempted to get me to recant. During the last call, I said if the case went to trial, my deposition would become my testimony.

 

They soon settled with her.

  

What I learned was how economic discrimination is. There was about a $10,000 salary gap between us. By not even considering her application, UPI was, in effect, keeping her down.

 

As for my actions, I do not consider myself any sort of hero. I did what anyone would do for a highly respected colleague.

 

African Americans have a bona fide complaint about discrimination. Certainly not every white man or woman is a racist, but there are plenty of racists out there, sometimes, I learned more than 30 years ago, in the most surprising places.

 

This article first appeared on News & Tech magazine’s website in July 2020. The magazine has since closed.

Pledging While Black -- The Value of Institutional Memory

Institutional memory is one of those things that's easy to lose. Replace a few executives, or key personnel, and, before you know it, the current crop of managers has no idea what their organization did or didn’t do in the past.

This means that their organization – whether it’s a major corporation, a small business, a church, a school, a college, or a sorority – is vulnerable to repeating a mistake it made once before.

I’m not here to debate the merits of history lessons – I’m all for them – but I am suggesting that if there is little or no institutional memory, then there is a higher likelihood that the organization will make a mistake that could have easily been avoided – had the managers only known the past.

More years ago than I care to count, I was student at DePauw University, a humble liberal arts school located in central Indiana, that has recently found itself the focus of The New York Times, CNN and a few other media outlets, especially in the Hoosier state.

I was a reporter for the school’s student newspaper, The DePauw, when Delta Zeta, also the focus of the media lately, decided to discriminate against an African American woman who attempted to pledge the sorority.

A few members of the sorority approached University officials, saying the student was not allowed to pledge because she was black.

Heavens to Betsy!!!! If only this girl hadn’t been PWBing everything would have been okay. I mean the nerve of some people – Pledging While Black. It’s almost as a bad as Driving While Black through a wealthy, discriminating white community!

A fellow reporter and I covered the sorority and the University’s actions against Delta Zeta. As I recall, the University asked Delta Zeta to accept the student. I can’t remember if she joined the group or not.

In the latest news, Delta Zeta’s headquarters, located in Ohio, forced out what they determined were all of the ugly girls in the DePauw chapter, saying, as a cover, that they weren’t doing all they could to make their chapter successful.

What it really came down to, according to all of the news reports, was that Delta Zeta headquarters, last Fall, decided it wanted to improve its looks at DePauw. So if you were carrying a few extra pounds or didn’t possess the kind of looks that turned a guy’s head, then you were history.

Once again, some of the girls from Delta Zeta, especially those that were forced out, approached the University, telling them they had no where to live and how they had been discriminated against because of their looks.

Had someone at Delta Zeta gone through the files, or had the organization even possessed some kind of institutional memory, there’s a good chance this wouldn’t have happened. Or, perhaps, it would have gone down differently.

That’s something that will be debated long into the future – among those who care.

What is known is that DePauw possesses a long memory. The University’s president, Bob Bottoms, has been around the campus a long time, even before I was a student there. So he knew DePauw had to respond, especially because it was the focus of some of the country’s top media outlets.

To his credit, Bottoms shut down the Delta Zeta chapter at DePauw. That’s the advantage of institutional memory. Bottoms had seen this before and he’d had enough.

Too bad no one at Delta Zeta headquarters possessed the same knowledge.

Ten or twenty years from now, Delta Zeta will likely re-open on DePauw’s campus. When they do, the sorority’s top officers will likely make sure they get their fair share of the best-looking girls they can find.