Vernon Jordan
For nearly two decades, Vernon E. Jordan, Jr. has been invited to speak at a Sunday service of the historic Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel on the campus of Howard University. Jordan, who graduated from Howard University Law School in 1960, has often described Rankin Chapel as one of the touchstones of his life. Last Sunday, his speech there concerned a different topic, Black Americans’ New Talented Tenth, and, with his permission, we reprint it here.
Let Us Bow Our Heads:
God of Our Weary Years,
God of Our Silent Tears,
Thou Who Hath Brought Us Thus Far
On Our Way.
Thou Who Hath Led Us
Into The Light,
Keep Us Forever In Thy Path, We Pray;
Lest Our Feet Stray from the Places,
Our God, Where We Met Thee,
Lest Our Hearts Drunk With The Wine
Of The World, We Forget Thee.
Shadowed Beneath Thy Hand,
May We Forever Stand,
True to Our God,
True to Our Native Land.
Let the chapel say “Amen.
Once again, Dean [Bernard] Richardson [Dean of Rankin Chapel] has summoned me to the Hilltop, to the beautiful and historic Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel, where I first worshipped in September of 1957, my first year at Howard University Law School.
Since 1992 it has been my great honor to occupy this hallowed pulpit where Mordecai Johnson, Benjamin Mays, Gardner Taylor, Martin Luther King, Jr., Howard Thurman, William Holmes Borders, Vernon Johns, Daniel Hill, Evans Crawford and others preached, instructed, inspired, and guided this university family, feeding us with knowledge and understanding – while reminding our consciences to hunger.
Coming here is one of the mountain-top experiences of my life, and I thank Dean Richardson for another “subpoena” to experience “the sweet torture of Sunday morning in the Rankin Chapel pulpit.”
My subject this morning is the New Talented Tenth, and my text is found in Psalms, Chapter 116, Verse 12. The text reads: “What shall I render unto the Lord for all the benefits he has provided me?”
The phrase, The Talented Tenth, was coined by Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois in 1903 to describe the top 10 percent of Black Americans—the men and women he believed would become the leaders of Black America.
Du Bois wrote, “The Negro Race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men. The problem of education … is the problem of developing the Best of this race that they may guide the Mass away from the contamination and death of the worst, in their
own and other races.”
Fundamentally, Du Bois was saying that the charge of the educated Black was to lift the veil of ignorance, as Booker T. Washington called it, from the masses of the newly emancipated Black people.
But unlike Washington, who provided specialized industrial education, Du Bois said the power of the Black elite would “lie in its knowledge and character, not in its wealth.” In his mind, the awesome and important task was for the privileged and talented few to elevate the many.
As to the historic Washington – Du Bois debate, I take the view that they were both right. Too often in life, we tend to think the answer is either/or when actually it is both/and. Washington built a great, lasting institution and Du Bois gave us a powerful, lasting idea.
Let me explain to you how this subject – the Talented Tenth – came to me.
Every year at Martha’s Vineyard in August, there is an auction for the local charities, called “The Possible Dreams Auction.”
It is the type of auction where you bid money to have Carly Simon come sing at your home after dinner; or drive in a race car with Al Unser, Jr. – who has won the Indianapolis 500; or go to a premier of a movie with Doug Liman, who directed the Jason Bourne movies; or dine at the beautiful home of the late Katharine Graham; or spend an evening on the late Walter Cronkhite’s boat.
For the last 20 years, I have been auctioned off for 18 holes of golf and lunch at the Farm Neck Country Club.
And, for 19 of those 20 years, I have been “bought” at the auction by White people.
Last summer, I went to the driving range to meet the person who paid for the privilege of witnessing my less-than-mediocre golf game; and for the first time, the winner was a Black man who had invited two other brothers to play a foursome of four brothers.
The brother who bought me went to Columbia University, Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School, and is a partner in a major New York law firm.
The second brother went to Franklin Pierce University, in New Hampshire, and Harvard Business School, and is a private-equity partner at a large bank.
The third brother attended Wofford College and Clemson University, both in South Carolina, of course. He is a partner in a major accounting firm.
As we approached the 10th hole, it dawned on me that these brothers are the New Talented Tenth.
And, just this fortnight I had meetings with two outstanding Black women: the one, the chairman and CEO of a Fortune 500 company, and the other – the chief investment officer of a large state pension fund, where she manages a $145-billion portfolio.
And, this morning, I stand here speaking to Howard University students who, like the others, are the New Talented
Tenth.
And, the question of the morning is: New Talented Tenth, “What shall you render unto the Lord for all the benefits he has given you?”
You, by your presence at this university, are the inheritors of a tradition. You are the runners in the relay race for freedom and justice.
The baton has been passed from Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass to W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, to James Weldon Johnson and Channing Tobias, to Mary McLeod Bethune and Mordecai Johnson, to Martin Luther King, Whitney Young, Roy Wilkins, Ruby Hurley and Fannie Lou Hamer, to John Lewis and Julian Bond and Ruby Doris Smith and Marion Wright Edelman – and from them now to you.
The baton now is in your hands and your first task, I believe, is to assess the situation.
What then is the state of Black America as you take the baton? When historians record the present moment in time, they can take their test from Charles Dickens:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness … it was the season of Light; it was the season of Darkness …
Let’s begin with the “best of times.”
Since 1970 the total number of Black elected officials in the United States has increased seven-fold from 1,469 to approximately 10,500.
The number of female Black elected officials has increased greatly. Black women were 10.9 percent of all Black elected officials. Now they are 35.9 percent.
Since 1970, there have been three Black United States Senators, two Black governors, eight Black lieutenant governors and one Black president.
Since 1970, the number of Black state legislators has quadrupled from 169 to 631.
In 1970, Mississippi had 95 Black elected officials. Today, it has 950. There are similar stories in most of the Old South: Georgia has 640; Alabama has 757; South Carolina has 547.
During this period, Black mayors have been elected and re-elected in most of the largest cities in the country.
Since 1970, the number of Black lawyers has grown nearly seven-fold from 3,000 to 20,000. Much the same story can be
told for the number of judges, engineers, major league coaches, and managers and a whole lot more.
Black buying power in 2008 was $913 billion dollars, and is projected to reach $1 trillion this year.
Black men and women are CEOs of multi-national corpora rations and presidents of major universities and serve as corporate directors and in significant corporate management positions.
We have had two Black national security advisorsm who also served as Secretaries of State. We have served in the Cabinet at HUD, Transportation, Commerce, Labor and as Special Trade Representative. Three Blacks have been Ambassador to the U.N. We have had three Blacks on the Federal Reserve Board and two Black men and a Latino woman on the Supreme Court. We have a Black Attorney General appointed by a Black President. Almost every door that was once shut to Black Americans is now open.
And yet, in many important ways, these are also the worst of times.
America has endured 13 recessions since the Great Depression. None of them has had the combination of length, breadth and depth of the current recession.
While all Americans have felt the brunt of the current recession, Blacks have borne a disproportionate share of the job losses and housing foreclosures. The latest report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics says national unemployment is 8.8 percent. For Blacks, it is 15.4 percent.
Today, more Black men are in jail than in college. That’s a relatively new development. Go back to the 1980 Census and you will find that there were three times as many Black men in college as there were in prison. By the 2000 Census, it had flipped. There were 791,600 Black men in prison and 603,032 enrolled in college.
A majority of children in all racial groups, and over 80 percent of Black and Hispanic children in the 4th, 8th and 12th
grades cannot read nor do math at grade level.
The conclusion is that the brightest lights throw into sharp relief the shadows. Thus, my message to the New Talented Tenth is that you cannot concentrate on the best of what we have done. You must focus on the worst and determine what we need to do. Your obligation, your responsibility, your challenge as the New Talented Tenth is to the least of our brothers and sisters – those who cry out this morning for a crust of bread and a morsel of meat.
You cannot use the ladder of opportunity as if it is a fire escape ladder that retracts the minute one person climbs it. You cannot enter the ranks of the elite and then close ranks.
Du Bois would chasten us – that this was not the point of getting an education. This is not about becoming one of the privileged few for its own sake. It is about using the privilege of an education to increase the number beyond the few.
When Du Bois first wrote his essay, the Talented Tenth was criticized for being an elitist idea. And it was. In many ways, it still is.
But the aim – his goal – was profoundly egalitarian and idealistic. He saw that most Blacks in America had been consigned to lives of hardship by unjust circumstances beyond their control. He believed that our race’s best chance for success, for improving its lot was through an elite group of leaders who would go out and use the knowledge, status, and power they had acquired to improve conditions for their brothers and sisters. His argument stopped with the Talented Tenth.
For you, the New Talented Tenth, the goal must be to use those talents to create a talented majority, a talented totality.
That goal, that commitment is what must be rendered unto the Lord for all of the benefits He has given you.
For to whom much is given, much is required.
I have been blessed with the opportunity — the privilege, the honor – to serve in the civil rights struggle as a civil rights lawyer, NAACP Field Secretary in Georgia, Director of the Voter Education Project, Executive Director of the United Negro College Fund, and Chief Executive Officer of the National Urban League.
And, I want to let you in on something this morning – the real motivation for me to serve and to lead happened when I was
12 years old.
My grandfather, Jim Griggs, was a sharecropper on Mr. Robert Callier’s place in Talbott County, Georgia, where I visited every August of my childhood. In the summer of 1947, I got up the nerve to ask him something that concerned me. We were sitting in rocking chairs on the porch of his roadside shanty.
As we rocked the chairs to the same rhythm, I said, “Pa, I want to ask you a question.” He said, “What is it, boy?” And I said, “Pa, at 70 years old, way down here in Talbott County on Mr. Robert Callier’s place, what is it, Pa, that you want most out of life?”
And, Pa raised himself up from that old raggedy rocking chair, and he had snuff in the front of his mouth and tobacco in the black of his mouth at the same time, and he got up and spat that tobacco and snuff all the way to the highway in a straight line.
And, he leaned back, and said, “Junior, at 70 years old, way down here in Talbott County on Mr. Robert Callier’s place, all I want out of life is to be able to go to the bathroom indoors in a warm place one time before I die.”
That was my grandfather’s highest aspiration. That was his impossible dream – to be able to go to the bathroom indoors in a warm place one time before he died.
Now, what dawned on me is that my grandfather didn’t say he wanted to learn to read and write and do arithmetic so that the White man could not cheat him when he dealt with him as a sharecropper.
He didn’t say he wanted to register to vote or sit on the jury or eat at the lunch counter or go to the library, because his life was so blinded by segregation, discrimination, and dehumanization that his highest aspiration was a basic creature comfort.
The shutters of my grandfather’s life were so closed that he could foresee no future for his 12-year-old grandson or himself: No sense that Junior would finish college; come to the West Point of the Civil Rights Movement, Howard Law School; partner in a big law firm; partner in an investment bank. Pa’s shutters were closed to that.
But thanks be to God, the shutters of my life are sufficiently open, so that wherever I go, and whatever I do – personally, professionally, socially, politically – I am forever reminded, edified, sanctified, yea, even tormented by my grandfather’s experience.
What shall I render unto the Lord for all the benefits he has given me?
That is the question for you who graduate in two week. That is the question for the rest of you who will graduate in years to come.
Contemplate it. Think on it. Prepare for it. Study for it. And then live it!!!!
That, the New Talented Tenth, is your charge to keep; your calling to fulfill, your rendezvous with destiny. And to that end, may you neither stumble nor falter. Rather, may you mount up with wings like the eagles; may you run and not be weary; may you walk together, children, and not faint.
Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., a native Atlantan, is Senior Managing Director of Lazard Freres & Co., LLC, Senior Counsel of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, and a Senior Director of the Board of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
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