African American Legends; Darwin Davis, Equitable Life

Annabelle The African-American legend series highlights the accomplishments of blacks in areas as varied as politics, sports, aviation and business. We will explore how African-Americans have succeeded in areas where they have been previously excluded because of segregation, racism and lack of opportunity. I'm your host, Dr. Rosco C. Brown, Jr. And joining us on today's program is Darwin Davis, Senior Vice President of the Equitable

Companies. Darwin is one of the highest blacks in the corporate world, and we are going to take a little journey into that corporate world. We're glad to have you with us today. Thank you, and it's good to be here. Now, tell us about your journey in the corporate world. You are a legend in our community, but it didn't just happen. You weren't born Darwin Davis, legend. How did you move through this corporate world? And very honestly, I have some difficulty valuing myself as a legend because I'm more comfortable with that. It's been 30 years, and it has been a long time. And your discussion with me about coming on this program, kind of forgotten about it's been 30 years, but it has been 30 years, and it's been a journey. It's been a very wonderful journey. It has not been absent of pitfalls and low levels, but for the most part it's been upward.

It's been fantastic, and I'm glad that I did it. How did you start? You went to college. What's the college? That's right, that's right. I went to University Arkansas at Pine Bluff. It was called A.M. in college at that time in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. My father's born and raised in Flint, Michigan. My father wanted me to go to a predominantly black college for one year, and I was also to go there for one year and not come back and go to Michigan State. And I got there, and I just was overwhelmed by the love and affection, the faculty, the black teachers there. I had never had a black teacher, born and raised in Flint, Michigan, never had had a black teacher in my life until I went to college. And I got there, and it was just wonderful, and I found a home there, and I loved it there. I stayed there, and I graduated, and I have been very involved with that school every since. And then after you left college. I left college in 1954, long time ago, and it's a brown case decision. That's right, that's right.

40 years, 41 years ago, but I left. I came back home to Flint, Michigan, where I was born and raised, and I worked in a post office for just a half a year because I had to go to service at that time. Went to the military, came out, went to apply at General Motors, because General Motors is a place to run everything in Flint, Michigan, and went to apply, and they were very nice. And very, very polite to me, but they told me that they just did not accept applications for those kind of jobs from colored people. And it wasn't anything ugly about this. I wasn't even angry. It's the way the world was. I was disappointed, and you know, as I look back there, and they were not being mean or ugly, and I don't want to condemn General Motors, because it wasn't just General Motors, it was everybody, but that's happened, that is happened where I happened to go. I then went to the service, and then went, wasn't service, I realized I needed to get a job. But night I went to school, I went to, went and got my teacher certificate while I was in school, and when I got out, while I was in the Army, when I got out, I went to work

in Detroit, teaching mathematics in Detroit Puppy School System, of which I did for 10 years. And then in 1965, 1965, things that started to happen, and I went to work for the equitable in Detroit, Michigan as a salesman, and you know, you asked me, was we were just talking quite casually, but how was it, how did I do it, and really, you know, it first was very simple, because I said I would work hard in everybody else, and hard work in the beginning really paid off, because I was a salesman, and I made my living, calling on people, and selling the company's products, and enjoying it, and then it became a, like a religion to me, an obsession to me, because I realized that black people, if they were going to have anything, they need to provide something for the future. And this became a real thing with me, and I really was very successful with it, and I realized

the more I helped people, the more successful I'd be. Now the equitable, I know she used the way. The equitable. That's a very venerable conversation. The Bronx, right? Yeah, right. You're right, right. They are probably the largest among the largest, and the whole world. They are among the largest. That's right. And as a result of your being successful, they have, I believe, at one time, you were the leading salesman in the whole country. I was leading men, sales manager as a matter of fact, of the three. I then went on, and did well there, and became a district manager of the equity. I had nine hundred and sixty district managers, and three years later, I was a number one in the whole United States of those district managers, and then I became an agency man. They'd be a branch manager that most people recognize, and then I became, and as a branch mayor for three years, I was in the top two of the whole nation one, the coveted president's trophy for those two years.

And then, after having been a business just seven years, and I think that's probably still a record for this company, which is 135 years old, I became a vice president, and they moved me to New York City, and that's when I had the privilege of meeting you and becoming friends with you. That was 21 years ago, and it's been a wonderful thing. Well, one of the things that you've done since you've been in New York City and nationally is you brought the resources of the equitable to the African-American social service and philanthropic community. I know you because of our relationship with the Black Leadership Commission on AIDS, you being the chair, and I've been the vice chair, but I also know you've been very involved with the United Eagle College one, and a number of other philanthropists now, in terms of corporate interest in these things in the African-American community, I guess it cuts both ways. One is that they want to show the African-American community that they care, and therefore they get more business, but the other is that they want to strengthen the institutions in the African-American community.

That's right. And I know Cory Ackland, who had been the previous chair, was very much committed to this, and I know that the successors, Jen Retton, so on, have done similar ways. How do you make a determination as the principal African-American, as to which of these causes, everybody I know says, if you need money right, Darwin Davis, and I get out of that agreement. How do you make the judgment? I know you've got involved, you've been tremendously involved in AIDS. Now, how did you happen to decide to put so much of your energy and the corporate resources into AIDS? Well, let me just take the whole philosophy, first of all, that I've always used, and I would say this to you that I feel that there's an obligation that every Black who has the privilege and is fortunate enough, and I use the word fortunate and lucky enough, because I think there's a lot of luck involved in being able to have this situation and be involved in this situation, has the responsibility and obligation to bring those resources to our community.

And I believe that companies expect this. Look, I'm Black, Echo knows that I'm Black, I mean, it's pretty easy to see that I am, and I think they expect me to do this, and I think too many of us don't really just go do it. And how do I decide, because first of all, it needs to be a business reason for this. Do you use the thing about AIDS? Well, you know, AIDS is very, very, primarily affects our business. I don't know what the latest numbers are, but I do remember one killer of young people between age of 18 and 30 years. Yes, but the numbers in terms of insurance business, I recall some years ago, and I remember then we had seven people that we paid on the, that had died of AIDS, and that's where the death certificate said AIDS, but each one of the, we spent $180,000 on medical bills for those people. So there's a business reason. There's a business connection as to AIDS and, and, and, and, it's an echoes self interest to be involved in AIDS, and AIDS is a, as more of color now, as you and I know in New York, in New York here, especially.

And so we have done a lot of work with this, and you and some other people made me feel very proud and asked me to be the chairman of the board of the largest, most important Black AIDS organization in America, the Black Leadership Commission on AIDS, and it was a business, it was a good business for me to do that, good business for equitable, it was good for me to do. I've tried to always have a business connection. Education is, is the thing that I've been involved in, uh, old friend of yours, uh, the Albert G. Oliver, El Oliver, and you remember him, who died in a car accident, but there's a program named for him, and I'm also the chairman board of that. The Albert G. Oliver program, we have sent over 450 young Black and Hispanic people to private schools, the best, the so-called best private schools in the East Coast, and these are New York City youngsters, these are youngsters who score in a top 5% of all the students there. Then on a college level, and I've tried to sort of divide it out, the college level, I've been very active, president of the Jesse Owens Foundation, very active at the

Jackie Robinson Foundation, uh, I'm on the board of the, of the National Minority Junior Golf Scholarship Association, we have sent over 300 kids to college, Black and Hispanic kids to college and golf scholarships, and then on the higher level, I remember the consortium for higher education, the National Authority of Higher Education, where we get Blacks and the PhD programs, and you'll, you'll agree to go and teach in a, in a historically Black college, we will make sure you get your PhD and won't have to spend any money, won't have any loans. Then I'm on the board of Drew Medical School, and in my own college, you talked about I just let the funds drive and raise $650,000, well, you know, and I, very quickly, but those are some of the things that, these are all business connections, these are reasons that, that the corporation needs for these things to be successful because we're, we're corporate citizens. Now, another part of the corporate involvement in the African-American community is business itself.

I know that Ecuador and many of the other companies were involved in starting small minority business enterprise, now I don't know if those are still continuing in that format because of changes in legislation because somebody was federal money, but what is equitable doing specifically to help develop business in the African-American community? Yes, you know, let me, let me, because that's an important point you bring up, yeah, you're talking about the mess, and we, we developed one of the first and we, the largest, most successful under Frank Savage, who's an African-American senior vice president of the Echo, would you call it Equico? He, he is, it was, that's what is called Equico, Equico Capital Management Association, Management Association, I guess it was, but that would became a $20 million organization. And then, then at the SBA, it had a lot of encumbrances because it had the SBA guarantees. Then we took that, and we sold it to these black guys who ran it, who ran it for the Echoberry Echo employees.

We sold it to them, Gleeves Kristoff and Duane Hill and Larry Morris and, and Devoker, and we sold this business to them. They took the business, and now they are, they do leverage buyouts, and they do venture capital deals. And they could not do, because you see, as things changed, the black community needed, needed to have money available to without all those encumbrances of SBA. So that's what we did. We still, they're still very friends, very good friends of the Echoals. Now is that was, when you say you sold it to them, you transferred the funds that Equico will had to that corporation. That's right. And eventually, I guess they have to pay it back there. Oh, they have to pay it. They have to pay it. No, it was a little, it was a business deal. It wasn't, it wasn't a free, free lunch deal, but it shouldn't be, no. But you know, things have changed so dramatically, and the Equitable now, just as one company. And I don't want to just talk about the Equita, because there are other companies who are doing really great things too, but the one I know most about. But the Equita is, is, is getting back into making sure that we, we went through a phase in our company very honestly, where we had some problems because of different things that

happened to us, and we became a stock company, and everything changed. The world literally changed around us. And so now we're doing some things now to make sure that African Americans become, in large numbers of African Americans, we're going across the country now, and we're, they have a program of hiring, training, and promote, and black people into very professional jobs, and we're not talking about just, these are not trainee jobs, these are, these are high level jobs, we want to hire people who are CPAs, people who are lawyers, want to hire these people, bring them into the company. And I give them opportunities to really make a lot of money, these are some real opportunities. Also we have a, we've done some things in Harlem at 7,000 and 110th Street there, and in redoing we have urban initiatives program where we have done that, and different things that we've done with historically black colleges, and that we have, we're very proud of these things.

We have the number three or four person in the company, Bill McCaffrey is on the board of Xavier University, and he led the fund drive and raised $50 million, and all the supported by the company, the vice chairman of the board was on, it was also the vice chairman board of Howard University, and executive vice president was in North Carolina, and one of the schools there, and this is a senior officer program that we have had for a number of years, that, now you say Ecuador is a stock corporation now, and then you traded on the market. That's right. Anyone can buy stock, that's right. Now are you doing anything to encourage more African Americans to become stock holders? There is no program that I know of, very honestly, that we're doing that, I don't know that we really could do that, and it's an excellent suggestion, we have not, we have not had a program to say hey listen, African Americans buy our stock, we have not done that. I don't know that we can, but I'm sure they're going to find out, I'd never have thought

of it approaching it that way, because one of the things we talk about is African Americans being involved in the Thai society, being involved in the ownership, and I know that you're international division, what's at Alliance Capital Management is run by Frank Savage, who's an African American, very good friend about it. Frank is a vice chairman, and a very important person in that organization, Frank heads up the international division that Frank has, Frank is all over the world, he's a nice body Arabian, South Africa, London, Japan, he's all over the world. Now what would they do, get South Africa, get money from South Africa, and invest it for them, so South Africa would have more money from South Africa, but I think he's doing more than that there, and I don't know the details on what he's doing very, honestly, that wouldn't want to preempt by trying to even guess, but I think he's doing much more than that there, I think it's a matter of getting more involvement, and helping them do some things that they're trying to do. Now you talked about your career, 54 brown case, 65 civil rights bill, voting rights bill, success, et cetera.

Now we have the contract for America, which sometimes I call the contract on black people, which is going to take away affirmative action, take away lunch programs, et cetera. How do you see the African-American community, that's young African-Americans, old African-Americans, responding to this, well, I know that there have been opportunities under Gen Rhett and of course actually leadership after we've done a tremendous net. Now we've got the things that affirmative action is bad, that we need to have a level of playing for you without realizing that black folks have been down to downside for 350 years. Now how do you see this affecting African-Americans and what suggestions do you have for young African-Americans, or other African-Americans of any age to deal with this contract? And we're talking about this in this particular case as it kind of impacts on the corporate government.

Right. I believe that, first of all, I think it's just a nightmare that we woke up and all of a sudden we've got to deal with this now. Because I think it's a joke that these so-called conservative politicians would wake up one day and say that we have not had equality, we have all these blacks, we have these wonderful jobs and they're doing all these good things and we see them doing all this and we've got cabinet members and all this when the facts are that 97% of all the senior level jobs in corporate America are white men. And that the other 3% is divided up between white women, blacks, Hispanics, Asians and everybody else. I mean, it's a joke for them to say that, but we've got to deal with that and we've got to deal with this whole attitude. But I have always fought very hard on the side of what I know to be right. I know that young people need to keep working, I think they need to be getting the education, I think you've got to get the education now.

The whole world has changed tremendously, the world is going to change even more, especially in the financial services business. You just look at what's happening now, the secretary of the treasure, who's the good friend here from New York City and a good friend of Dick Genrettes, but he's now talking about having banks and own insurance companies or banks and insurance companies and broker houses all really want to be in the same business. They need to be separate, but they all want to manage your money for you. And so I think that all these things that happened, and I'm very quickly, I know it's time we have here, but very quickly I tell you that I look at all this going in cycles. In the 60s, I called the cycle the revolution. We burned down cities, I'm from Detroit, and I remember getting my kids in the car and dry, I had a convertible car with the top down driver on city and took pictures of Detroit on fire and burning, because black people felt hopeless and hapless and no opportunity. When the 70s came and you had black entrepreneurship and Nixon and business schools opened up and the law schools opened up, they had programs to encourage black people to come

into them and help violence. No matter if I have earned it, I actually really grew under Nixon. That's an irony. That's the irony of the whole thing, and that's why I said this is a joke these people are not talking about doing this. And then that was the 70s, and you had thousands of black people who went and got education and they went to professional schools. And then by the 80s, now you had all these hundreds of people in black America, sorry, in corporate America, who are now in the corporation, they were doing things. Then the 80s came, and now they have 10 years of real management experience. They've got the best education that America has recognized as the best education to do all these things, and then the actor or the cowboy from Hollywood comes in and rise up because President of the United States, and he makes corporations feel that we wouldn't have to really worry about that anymore. And then there became a downing of this, and the lessling of it, and I think he'll go down in history as the one person who did the most to hurt us. But then came the 90s, and then we had the downsizing, the right sizing, the coming together

of all these corporations, so we had a sort of a level of time. But now the year 2000 is coming. And I would say this, that I believe that not enough companies, especially many top flight white executives, have not paid enough attention to the studies that have happened for the year 2000, and you know them, your audience knows them. But I think that, well, first of all, we know what's coming, and I think it's going to be a time when this is going to, they're going to have to deal with these young black people that are coming out there now. Ellis Coles in his book, The Rage of the Privilege Class, talked about what happened. We had 10, 20 years of highly educated, highly motivated, highly qualified people who were managers in corporate America. They managed big organizations, and very successfully, they had the experience, they had the education, they had the knowledge, they had all the things that were happening. But yet, they did not come. The glass ceiling. The glass ceiling.

And it's really a cement ceiling, it's not so glass, because it's very hard. And they did not get promoted, and consequently, you end up with a lot of very disillusioned and angry, angry black people, one psychiatrist said that blacks in corporate America had more rage than some blacks were unemployed. But of course, one of the things that we know about dealing with rage is you try to find an outlet for it. And the outlet is investment and development of the labor force. The demographics will change this. By the year, 20 percent of the people going into the labor market will be minority. By the year 2020, it will be 60 percent. The country cannot continue to grow as an economic place without total involvement of its minority. And that's the answer to the question, is that I believe the advice I have for young people, I think that the two things, and most rapidly propel your success in corporate America, is your ability to write well, and your ability to speak well.

I say the young people control your speech, learn to speak clearly, learn to deliver things well. And then learn to write well, and I don't mean penmanship either. I mean, you ought to be able to take an envelope on the back of an envelope and write an idea down, on the back of an envelope, and whoever reads it, knowing nothing about that subject, we ought to be able to have an idea of what it's about. Because that raises an interesting question, 60 minutes a few weeks ago, had a show about Black English and how this was internalized in African-American people. I don't believe that. You don't believe that. I agree. They have certain cultural patterns. But to promote this as a way of maintaining your ethnic identity is self-defeating. Absolutely. You know, there's a trick to this, I think, of being a Black and corporate America. You've got to be able to understand that you're Black, know that you're Black, have fun being Black, enjoy being Black, be proud of being Black. But then you've got to be able to, when you go into the office, you can't go there.

I don't go there and take the mores and things that I like to do with my Black friends to the corporation. That is not the place to do it. If you want to go and do whatever you want to do and say, yo, baby, I mean, I might say yo, baby, on the golf course with my friends, and I'll enjoy it and be fun. But you can't go there into the corporate American and say, yo, to dig, generate. Of course, the other thing is that many of the things that we deal with through the computers, through the formulas, through the progressions, et cetera, are not cast in any ethnic space. That's right. A number is a number. That's right. The plan is a plan. You don't know the direction. Yes. And clearly, you and many other African Americans who've been in the corporate suite to understand this, I imagine that the greatest pressure you have being in the corporate suite is not so much from the whites that you co-partner with, but are as much from African

Americans, other, particularly those in your corporation, who don't understand your role or their role, and you become the surrogate for the racism that corporations have shown over the years. Now, you've been very successful in breaking it down. How did you do that? I have been trying to be very honest, and I've spent a lot of time inside. I've always viewed myself as a, not the, but a representative of my company, both inside and outside corporate America. I think that that employees inside, I've always spent a lot of time getting to try to know as many people in the company as possible, and I'm talking about the janitors of food service people. I know in my name, I spend my time in dealing with them and talking to them and fang out. And they feel free to come to me. I mean, you cannot imagine how many people just come to my office and I just, and they're welcome. My door is open.

They come to my office and I sit and talk about things that maybe they could do to better themselves and how they could do it. People come, they don't talk about their children and things they want to do. But I think that's something you have to do. And you're right. You've got to be, being a corporate, a black corporate executive is a difficult thing. Ed Jones and some of his writings he talks about the balancing act, where you got to be smart, but not so smart that you alienate white people. You've got to be diligent and bright and aggressive, but enough to make black people think that you're not an Uncle Tom, but not too aggressive, the white people you've created. But don't you like that's going to change, for example, when Colin Powell was running in the United States services, they didn't really care whether it's black, red, purple or whatever, he made the decisions. They followed the decisions and he was breathing the way he did it. I think that the world tomorrow will show more of that. I think so too. I think the corporate, I think corporate America is going to show more of that because quite America has changed tremendously since my 30 years ago in the corporate America, where you now have fewer people doing more work, you have, the computer is an integral

part of what we do, everything we do, we're in our, in our particular case, we're a stock company now. And no longer are we a big laid back mutual insurance can, we've got to be aggressive, we've got to be responsive to stockholders. And that has changed tremendously and so the people now have got to really get with it. Okay, I want to thank you, Darwin Davis, for being with us, talking about the corporate world of corporate ladder and opportunities for African Americans and the challenge of the year 2000. Thanks for being with us. Thank you. Thank you very much for having me. Thank you. Thank you.