Leadership Examples And Lessons From The First Black Army Secretary

When Clifford Alexander, Jr., the first Black secretary of the Army, died Sunday at 88, he left behind several important examples and lessons for business leaders to follow. Alexander was an advisor to President Lyndon B. Johnson and chairman of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission [EEOC].

“Perhaps the major challenge during my time in office [as chairman of the EEOC] was getting employers to understand how much more needed to be done to give women their fair share of employment opportunities,” Alexander once recalled.

The Washington Post noted that “Guided by powerful mentors in academia, law and government, Mr. Alexander was the first Black student-body president at Harvard University, the first Black partner at the elite Washington law firm Arnold & Porter and spent his career seeking to shatter racial boundaries with statesmanlike calm. He seemed destined for elective office but lost a close race for D.C. mayor in 1974, shortly after the city won home rule.”

Alexander recounted to Military History the resistance and bias he encountered as Army secretary. “I remember what I considered a racist cartoon in Army Times. I think there were some who resisted me because I was the Black secretary of the Army. And on some occasions in front of Congress I thought that the questions were aimed more at me because of my color than according to my skill set. But that was a fact of the day, and I did my best to do my job—and just say, ‘The hell with you!’ If it was based on something else.”

Taking A Stand

In 2009, Alexander called on President Barack Obama and Congress to repeal the Pentagon’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. In an interview with Democracy Now, he said “The policy is an absurdity and borderline on being an obscenity. What it does is cause people to ask of themselves that they lie to themselves, that they pretend to be something that they are not.

“There is no empirical evidence that would indicate that it affects military cohesion. There is a lot of evidence to say that the biases of the past have been layered onto the United States Army.”

The policy was abolished in 2011.

Fighting Workplace Segregation And Discrimination

“Perhaps no American has done more to combat segregation and discrimination in private employment and the military. His dignity and resolve in the face of hatred were inspirational,” Marc H. Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League said via email.

“Cliff saw his role as secretary of the Army as a key extension of the civil rights movement, and he inaugurated and enforced policies that were spectacularly effective in achieving his goal,” the Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., a longtime friend, said in a phone interview with the New York Times.

“The fact that the United States military is, perhaps, the most integrated institution in our society can be traced to the foresight of Clifford Alexander,” Gates added.

A Groundbreaking Career

“If Alexander had influenced the only the political arena where he worked for decades, he still would be an inspiration today. However, the causes he fought for, like the Voting Rights Act, made a difference in the military, in workplaces, and on the streets in communities of color, as the civil rights movement grew and evolved,” Morial observed.

Emulating A Model Of Progress

“Business leaders from all industries should consider, as Alexander did, how our movements forward on matters in our workplaces, can become models of progress that can be made in many other [areas],in our country,” Morial observed.

“Alexander applied the lessons learned as EEOC chair under Presidents Johnson and Nixon to his position as secretary of the Army under President Carter. Business leaders can learn from Alexander how valuable knowledge that is garnered in one position can fuel their next position, even when these subsequent roles are not identical in nature. And when implemented strategically, and with a focus on the elements that achieved the initial positive outcome, success can be duplicated a second time, to create [an] even greater impact,” he concluded.

An Advocate For Inclusion

During his tenure as Army secretary, “there was an increase in Black general officers in the U.S. Army by 5%, totaling 30. This group included former Joint Chief of Staff Chairman and the first black Secretary of State Colin Powell, “ according to Ken Mayes the employer relationship navigator at Syracuse University’s Institute for Veterans and Military Families Onward to Opportunity program.

Mayes recalled that in a 2018 Fox news interview, Alexander “spoke about a New York City subway ad that displayed a picture of all white subway riders and no women or people of color in the campaign ad. He described this as a miscalculation of an accurate representation of reality because it is not very often that you will see a New York subway station without women or people of color sharing a ride. As an organization develops its marketing strategy, it should strive for inclusion when representing its internal structure or the markets it serves.”

Mayes noted Alexander advocated that inclusion should “address that employees are not only diverse but work well together. Nevertheless, it could be seen as essential for organizations to stress that they are attracting diverse employees and that all employees represent the organization.

“For this to happen, they not only need to communicate their diversity brand but also their inclusion brand,” he said.