Clifton Wharton: ‘A Roxbury Man’
Howard Manly
Clifton Wharton is a curious man. Long before Harvard, long before
all the corporate boards and foreign countries and Fortune 500 companies,
there was Roxbury.
It was a different place, a different time really, back in the late
1930s when Wharton lived on Walnut Avenue. For starters, the neighborhood
was mixed racially and economically. But race and class had little
to do with the profound sense of community — and excellence
— instilled in Roxbury residents.
“We had different family values,” Wharton said during
an interview, “and those values were focused on education.
Everyone thought that education was important and that is what everyone
talked about. All of us knew, regardless of where we lived or went
to school, that we were expected to achieve.”
Over the years, that value has been lost, a discouraging trend that
Wharton can only shake his head in disbelief. “I don’t
know what has happened,” Wharton said, “to imagine that
some in the minority community would actually denigrate excelling
academically.”
That is anathema to Wharton, even in today’s climate of anti-intellectualism.
A former chairman and Chief executive officer of TIAA-CREF, at the
time the nation’s 18th largest corporation with $268 billion
in assets and the world’s largest pension fund, Wharton was
in Boston the other day to deliver a keynote address at the annual
meeting of The Partnership, Inc., a group dedicated to enhancing
diversity within Boston corporations.
During the speech Wharton, 79, talked about some of the lessons
that he has learned during his impressive career. But most of those
lessons, he said, were learned in Roxbury and, specifically, the
Boston Latin School.
“At Latin,” Wharton said, “It was about performance.
We had to be better than the next guy. Not just as good, but better.
If you didn’t make it, at least you tried.”
It helps if one is curious, or, as Wharton likes to say, “on
a constant quest for learning and self-improvement.”
His started early on. His father was a career diplomat, and while
Wharton was conceived in Liberia—his father’s first
official posting — he was born in Boston. The Whartons were
always on the go, eventually stopping for a while on the Canary
Islands, off the coast of Spain, for six years. A young Cliff Wharton
spoke fluent Spanish and was something of an oddity walking around
the neighborhood in Roxbury.
Wharton laughs about it now. “One of my friends recently told
me that he thought that I was from Mars,’ Wharton said. “Another
one said that I was strange, but he and his friends still liked
me.”
Curiosity does have its drawbacks. Wharton has been writing his
autobiography for the last several years and has accumulated an
archive that includes 300 book file boxes and 58 file drawers. He
said the process has been yet another learning experience for him
because he finally understands some of his behavior.
“I can remember when I became the chancellor of the New York
schools, I went and visited all 64 campuses,” he recalled.
“I also remember becoming a member of a corporate board and
spending a week in every department on every floor of each of the
corporation’s three buildings in New York City. It only occurred
to me recently why I would do such a thing.”
As Wharton tells the story, his behavior can be traced back to his
childhood. Whenever his family traveled, it was usually by ocean
liner, and before Wharton would settle in to his room, he would
walk over virtually every square inch of the ship. “I guess
I just wanted to know everything that I possibly could before I
got started,” he said.
Wharton is a curious man. He came back to Boston Latin a few years
ago and delivered a speech on the lessons that he learned while
there. “This lesson,” he said, “was that innate
ability is randomly distributed in society, irrespective of race
or ethnicity or income. Boys who were Irish, Jewish, Italian, black
— the whole gamut of diversity that marked the student body
in our day — could and did, excel in any of our subjects.
Thanks to the high quality of elementary schools throughout the
city, our admission made no difference where we lived or our station
in life. From this I learned the importance of striving for excellence
and of equity — and the profound complementary of the two.
Wharton has had an extraordinary career. He graduated from Boston
Latin in 1943, and was accepted at Harvard at the age of 16. He
graduated from there in 1947 with a B.A. in history. He because
the first black to be admitted to the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced
International Studies, receiving a M.A. in international affairs
in 1948.
Wharton went on to earn a master’s degree and doctorate in
economics from the University of Chicago. Wharton spent the next
22 years working in economic development in Latin America and Southeast
Asia for the Rockefeller family philanthropic interests.
In 1970, Wharton became the first black to head a predominantly
white university. His tenure at Michigan State University was fraught
with student unrests and other social issues plaguing the nation
as a whole. Wharton left Michigan in 1978 to lead the State University
of New York System, the largest university system in the United
States. After about nine years, Wharton left to become the first
black to lead a Fortune 500 corporation.
His time at TIAA-CREF caught national attention. During his seven
years, the company’s assets doubled and his leadership provided
new products, options, and services. A recent profile in USA Today
characterized his tenure as “a remarkable piece of work”
and a “a spectacular performance.”
Wharton has served six presidents in various capacities, sat on
scores of corporate boards and has received 61 honorary degrees,
including one from his alma mater, Harvard.
The inscription on his 1992 Honorary Doctor of Laws citation reads:
“One of the commanding leaders of our time, yours is the great
talent to transform organizations into communities of purpose working
devotedly together to serve the common good of all people from all
backgrounds.”
Wharton takes his commitment seriously but with an air of grace
and affability that belie his intellectual curiosity. He is, after
all, a Roxbury man.
He said as much during a recent speech at the Black Issues in Higher
Education Gala in Washington, D.C.
“Whenever I see a person who has failed in life and become
a drain or a destructive influence on our society, I also see the
enormous waste in human capital,” Wharton said. “For
me any individual who has been allowed to fail for want of educational
opportunity represents a disgraceful waste of talent that might
have helped to make this world a better place…. If anything
is truly in the national interest, it is education. Any nation that
ignores the significance of investing in human capital will pay
a terrible price…”
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