Franklin A. Thomas's selection as the seventh president of the Ford Foundation, the largest and richest foundation in the world (its assets total $3.4 billion) becomes especially significant when you consider the fact that Thomas, a successful lawyer, is a black man and was chosen from among more than 300 applicants. On June 1, 1979, he replaced McGeorge Bundy, who stepped down to retire. (Bundy became president in 1966. He had previously been national security advisor to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson).
"Frank Thomas's appointment," wrote Vernon Jordan in a 1979 syndicated column, "as head of a major bulwark of American institutional life heralds a new era of black inclusion, not only as soldiers in our society, but as generals commanding its heights."
Franklin Thomas, the youngest of six children, like many black Americans, began life in a working class neighborhood. In his particular case, the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. His father, who died when Thomas was 11, worked as "a watchman down at the piers," said Thomas. "My mother [a native of Barbados] was a housekeeper; [she] cleaned people's houses, did day work."
As a public school student, Thomas was fortunate enough "to have some teachers who really saw some potential" in him. He also gives credit to his home atmosphere, especially to his mother who fostered the notion that "no one can determine what you're going to be but you and the only time you're damaged is when you let other people's assessment of you start to control your assessment of self. If you're honest and you work hard and you're reasonably smart and [you] get along well with people, you're going to have a good life. That's really what all of this is about. A good life, a decent life. Not hurt other people."
"I never knew any sense of limitation," continued Thomas. "I always worked hard, worked after school, joined the Boy Scouts at the age of 11. You didn't think of yourself as [being] extraordinary. Some guys chose to be on a street corner, hanging out and knocking other people in the head; other guys were on the street corners but you didn't think about trying to rip anybody else off and you knew which blocks were safe to go down, which ones weren't. You built a capacity to survive in an environment that on the one hand is menacing and at the same time is supportive because there are others just like you."
Because of Thomas's athletic ability (he was the captain and star of his high school basketball team), he was offered numerous athletic scholarships. He turned them down and enrolled instead at Columbia University, becoming the first member of his family ever to go to college. "I had a coach and teachers in high school who said 'Don't accept an athletic scholarship. Your grades are good enough to get [you] into the college you want on academic grounds. Then if you want to play basketball, you can. But you're not obliged to play it.' So I got a scholarship based on need rather than an academic scholarship and had a great time. I ended up playing basketball for four years anyway." In 1956 he received his B. A. degree.
After four years in the air force, he went to law school at Columbia, graduating in 1963 with an LL.B degree. A year later, Thomas was admitted to the New York state bar. "My first job was in the housing field [Federal Housing and Finance Agency], working in urban renewal."
Other jobs that followed were: Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York [Manhattan] (1964); deputy police commissioner for legal matters, New York Police Department (1965); and president and chief executive officer of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation (1967). "After the [urban] riots [in 1964], Senator [Robert] Kennedy and others had the idea of a development effort in the second largest black community in the country, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and asked me if I would leave my job [at the police department] to help organize it and get it started. After a lot of back and forth, I agreed to do it for two years; I stayed ten years. Then I went back and practiced law for a little while" before accepting the $120,000-a- year top job at the Ford Foundation.
Thomas also sits on the board of directors of such corporate giants as CBS, the Aluminum Corporation of America (Alcoa), and the New York Life Insurance Company. He is the only black person sitting on Citigroup's 26-member board of directors and, according to Current Biography (October 1981), "was instrumental in persuading that company to end its loans to the white supremacist government of South Africa."
Thomas, who has been divorced since 1972, has four children. Since he, at the age of 49, can no longer play basketball, he has tried to learn tennis. Once or twice during the winter he skis but, he is quick to point out, "on intermediate slopes, not on too tough slopes."
Despite the enormous responsibilities as head of the foundation, he tries not to take himself too seriously. And he continues to work 12-hour days, just as he did at the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation.
The following interview took place in Thomas's office at the Ford Foundation.
Charles Michael Smith: Has the Ford Foundation increased or decreased its funding for inner city programs?
Franklin Thomas: The foundation has increased its support for inner city poverty-related programs in each of the last four years and we look forward to an increase for the upcoming two-year period.
CMS: What programs are receiving financial assistance from Ford?
FT: The largest of the five major program areas the foundation supports is an area called urban poverty and that concentrates on the problems of housing and social and economic revitalization within the inner cities where large concentrations of poor people live and that effort involves supporting organizations that are trying to improve the living conditions in those areas. These organizations are usually called community development corporations.
CMS: Is volunteerism a viable solution to socio-economic problems?
FT: By itself, it is not a solution. It must be combined with commitments from each of the levels of government and a commitment through the private-for- profit sector. When combined with those commitments, volunteerism is a dynamic, critically important part of our strategy as a nation for dealing with some social problems.
CMS: What criteria do you use when you select an organization for a grant?
FT: We try to define problems on which we're going to work or support work in. We try to do that with sufficient clarity so that a prospective grantee can ask, 'Are you interested in these kinds of problems?' If the answer is yes, then we would encourage that person, group to submit a description of what it is they plan to do about an aspect of the problem. We then sit and go over that as a staff, decide if it seems to make sense, [see] if the apparent capability to carry it out is there, and if the answer to those questions is yes, then we would invite the prospective grantee in and have a discussion with them, and make a decision.
CMS: Do grantees come to you or do you come to them?
FT: We do both.
CMS: If I came to you as an individual with a program, I wouldn't necessarily have to be part of a group?
FT: You wouldn't have to, though the overwhelming share of our money goes to organizations that have a plan and a strategy. We do make some grants to individuals. Usually for study, research, what have you. But almost anything you want to carry out in an operational sense will require some institutional context within which to function. If you want to do something about housing beyond a study or a survey which you can do as an individual but you want to cause some change to happen there, then the odds are you're going to have to find some institutional way to bring that about.
CMS: Do Ford Foundation funds go to anti-poverty projects overseas?
FT: We spend roughly a third of our funds overseas in what we call developing countries. We have nine offices around the world.
CMS: Do you see inner city areas improving because of Ford Foundation money?
FT: That's the toughest question of all. How do you measure impact? My personal answer is yes, I see improvement. It's slower and less pervasive than any of us would like but it's clearly better than it would have been were these resources not being employed in the way they are and have been employed. I think I can answer that with certainty. The tougher question is "Is it enough?" The answer there is no and if not, then what the hell do you do about it? That's the continuing struggle.
CMS: Do you feel you have a special responsibility to the black community in your present position?
FT: It's a continuation of a concern and an interest and a relationship that really has been a part of my life. So I don't think of them as special. I just think of them as natural. They are with me as a part of what I am.
I also recognize the obligation to the total problem of trying to reduce or eliminate poverty and injustice and worry about peace and security matters, worry about international economic matters, worry about refugees and migration matters, worry about higher education, each of which has an impact on minorities, if you will, worldwide. And perhaps, just based on the experience of living in and working in some minority communities in this country, you get a particular sensitivity on not only what is needed, but on the means of assisting that are most likely to be effective.
This condensed article was originally published in two parts in the Harlem Weekly newspaper in 1984.
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