Sublime

W. E. B. Du Bois

founding member of a new organization called 100 Black Men. The

In Atlanta, a few months after my visit with Walter, I would go to a Bearden exhibition at the High Museum. The pieces depicted his youth in Charlotte, North Carolina, before his family moved north. There was also a video installation showing in the center of the exhibition room. Albert Murray sits alongside Bearden in much of it. They talk about h

What would he do when someone called him “Boy” instead of “Mr. Ford”? How would he handle a manager who thought Negroes had no place in a corporation like IBM? Would he fight back when a group of engineers sought to foul a project to make him look bad?

Skin color conveyed intelligence for him. Lighter skin meant greater intellect, darker skin the opposite. My father read widely of such racist views in books and articles by authors such as Arthur

“PULLMAN PORTER LECTURES: Ford Makes a Hit in an Address to Students at Dartmouth.” The Times continued to report on my grandfather in its April 13 issue of that year: “PULLMAN PORTER WINS AS COLLEGE LECTURER; John Baptist Ford, Who Made Four Hundred Dartmouth Students Look at His Profession with New Eyes, Talks of Traveling Public.”

The book is: Car Guys vs. Bean Counters: The Battle for the Soul of American Business.