Black Power in the Boardroom: Corporate America, the Sullivan Principles, and the Anti-Apartheid Struggle JESSICA ANN LEVY This article traces the history of General Motors’ first black director, Leon Sullivan, and his involvement with the Sullivan Principles, a corporate code of conduct for U.S. companies doing business in Apartheid South Africa. Building on and furthering the postwar civil rights and anti-colonial struggles, the international anti-apartheid movement brought together students, union workers, and religious leaders in an effort to draw attention to the horrors of Apartheid in South Africa. Whereas many left-leaning activists advocated sanctions and divestment, others, Sullivan among them, helped lead the way in drafting an alternative strategy for American business, one focused on corporate-sponsored black empowerment. Moving beyond both narrow criticisms of Sullivan as a “sellout” and corporate propaganda touting the benefits of the Sullivan Prin- ciples, this work draws on corporate and “movement” records to reveal the complex negotiations between white and black executives as they worked to situate themselves in relation to anti-racist movements in the Unites States and South Africa. In doing so, it furthermore reveals the links between modern corporate social responsibility and the fight for Black Power within the corporation. © The Author 2019. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. doi:10.1017/eso.2019.32 Published online August 2, 2019 JESSICA ANN LEVY is a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of History and the Corruption Laboratory for Ethics, Accountability, and the Rule of Law (CLEAR) at the University of Virginia. She received her Ph.D. in History from Johns Hopkins University. Contact information: Corcoran Department of History, University of Virginia, Nau Hall-South Hall, Charlottesville, VA 22904. E-mail: [email protected]. 170 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.202.226, on 01 Oct 2021 at 09:35:06, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/eso.2019.32 Black Power in the Boardroom 171 Introduction Pandemonium. That was how the New York Times’ reporter described the 1971 General Motors’ shareholder meeting. “The first public disagreement within memory on the 23-member G.M. board,” he claimed.1 The focus of the controversy was a series of remarks made by Reverend Leon Howard Sullivan. A veteran of the civil rights movement, Sullivan had recently earned the distinction of becoming GM’s first black board member and the first black director of a major Fortune 500 company. Rather than sitting quietly and observing the proceedings, as some of his colleagues on the board had hoped he would, Sullivan used the opportunity of his first shareholder meeting to speak boldly on the issue of Apartheid. He joined a group of share- holder activists calling for GM to end its operations in South Africa in protest of Apartheid.2 “Apartheid … is the most ruthless form of deal- ing with human beings in the world today. And … General Motors, Chrysler, Ford and 300 other American companies underwrite apart- heid by being there,” stated Sullivan. “I hold that General Motors should get out of South Africa.”3 Joining GM’s board in January 1971, amid a wave of shareholder and labor action calling for an end to racism within some of the largest U.S. cor- porations, Sullivan’s tenure at GM was illustrative of a broader shift within the black freedom struggle, which increasingly included calls for Black Power in U.S. corporate and financial institutions alongside demands for greater access to local and national government.4 Addressing corporate 1. Jerry M. Flint, “A Black Director of G.M. Will Vote Against the Board: Black General Motors Director Plans to Vote Against Board,” New York Times, April 9, 1971, 45.; Sullivan further ruffled the feathers of GM executives by testifying before the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Africa, where he called for “a total eco- nomic, political and social disassociation with South Africa.” “Dr. Leon Sullivan Calls for Boycott of S. Africa Before Sub-Committee,” Sun Reporter, May 29, 1971, 11. 2. The term “apartheid,” Afrikaans for “apartness” or “separateness,” first used in the late 1920s, has since been employed by scholars and activists to describe government-implemented racial discrimination in a variety of periods and locales. While most associated with South Africa during the years 1948 to 1991, apartheid has likewise been used to describe legal segregation and institutionalized racism in the United States, Israel, and other places. Bond, South Africa and Global Apart- heid; Grady-Willis, Challenging U.S. Apartheid; Massey and Denton, American Apartheid; Pillay, “Apartheid in the Holy Land”; Adebajo et al., From Global Apart- heid to Global Village; Davis, Apartheid Israel. 3. Sullivan, quoted in “Episcopal Resolution Backed By Dr. Leon Sullivan of GM,” Oakland Post, April 28, 1971, 13. 4. For more on this shift, see Levy, “Selling Atlanta”; Chatelain, “The Miracle of the Golden Arches”; Hill and Rabig, The Business of Black Power. The new focus on corporate America built on existing calls for greater access to local and national government within the Black Power movement. Countryman, “From Protest to Politics.” Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.202.226, on 01 Oct 2021 at 09:35:06, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/eso.2019.32 172 LEVY executives at a press conference in May 1970, Congresswoman Shir- ley Chisholm (D-NY) stated that American companies like GM had failed to respond “to the needs of black Americans” for too long.5 Her comments were echoed by Congressman Louis Stokes (D-OH). The congressman called for more black managers and black directors to wield real “decision-making [power] in American corporations.”6 Subsequently, American corporations appointed black directors and managers in record numbers in response to pressure from sharehold- ers, consumers, and government officials.7 Whereas in 1969 there had been only one black American on the board of a Fortune 500 company, by mid-1971 there were at least a dozen. By the end of 1972, there were fifty-four black directors in Fortune 500 companies.8 Similar increases in the number of black men in other executive, administra- tive, and managerial positions occurred between 1970 and 1980.9 The appointment of black managers and directors was only the beginning. Working in collaboration with religious and other organi- zations outside the corporation, many of the first black directors and black executives struggled to exert Black Power within their respective companies through initiating various corporate social responsibility programs aimed at improving the lives of black and other marginalized people at home and abroad. Speaking at a press conference shortly after his appointment was announced, Sullivan told the media, “I know General Motors is going to use me as a symbol and sample of how lib- eral it has become, but I am going to use them … I’ll be one voice out 5. Shirley Chisholm, quoted in Barbara Gold, “New Protest: General Motors Undemocratic?” The Sun, May 17, 1970, D1. 6. Louis Stokes, quoted in Morton Mintz, “GM Responds to Charges of Job Discrimination,” Washington Post, May 2, 1970, A5. 7. While some historians have suggested these appointments came out of corporate benevolence, there is significant evidence to show that corporate exec- utives were under pressure from multiple directions to diversify company man- agement. See, e.g., Thompson, Whose Detroit?, 103–127; “General Motors Hit on 2 Job Bias Counts,” Afro-American, November 14, 1970, 6; Eileen Shanahan, “13 in House Back Drive to Put Public Members on G.M. Board,” New York Times, May 1, 1970, 13; “‘What’s Good for U.S.’ posed at GM annual meeting,” Christian Science Monitor, May 25, 1970, 14; Barbara Gold, “New Protest: General Motors Undemo- cratic?” The Sun, May 17, 1970, D1. 8. Zweigenhaft and Domhoff, Diversity in the Power Elite, 91–93, 99; Collins, Black Corporate Executives. 9. Farley and Allen, The Color Line and the Quality of Life in America; Collins, “Black Mobility in White Corporations.” The vast majority of black corporate executives appointed during the 1970s were men, testifying to the continued double burden faced by black women. The first black woman to join a board of a Fortune 500 company was Patricia Robert Harris, former U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg. Harris joined the boards of Scott Paper and IBM in 1971, and Chase Manhattan in 1972. Zweigenhaft and Dornhoff, Diversity in the Power Elite, 96. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.202.226, on 01 Oct 2021 at 09:35:06, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/eso.2019.32 Black Power in the Boardroom 173 of 23 … but I’m going to do all I can to help my people—black people, brown people, underprivileged people.”10 Hence Sullivan’s outburst at the shareholder meeting calling for GM to leave South Africa. Sullivan’s choice of South Africa was far from arbitrary. Situated at the southern tip of the African continent and the intersections of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, the Republic of South Africa increasingly drew the attention of anti-racist and anti-imperial activists in the United States and other countries who worked to illuminate the connections between American corpora- tions doing business in South Africa and the country’s oppressive Apartheid system, which denied voting rights to approximately 60 to 90 percent of the population depending on the year.11 By the mid- 1970s, dozens of American corporations, including GM, faced calls from anti-apartheid activists to leave the country and stop doing busi- ness with South Africa.12 Even as he fought to pressure GM on South Africa, echoing other anti-apartheid activists, Sullivan’s position on the board ultimately shaped his approach to fighting Apartheid.