Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun? (54 page)

Jean S. Fugett, Sr.; Carolyn E. Fugett; Jean S. Fugett, Jr.; and Reginald Lewis in their apartment on Druid Hill Avenue in 1952. Lewis took pride in and loved being a big brother, and would become a lifetime mentor to Jean, Jr.

In the food service business, waiting tables was probably the next best thing to being maître d’. It was a prestigious position for a teenager trying to earn extra cash. As this letter of recommendation attests, Reginald F. Lewis was taught by his grandfather to be the best.

Reginald F. Lewis received letters in basketball and football when he graduated from Baltimore’s Dunbar High School in 1961. Because of his skills as a quarterback, the local newspaper referred to Lewis as “Bullet Lewis.”
Photo credit
: Dunbar High School yearbook,
Golden Memoirs
.

Reginald F. Lewis poses with his father, Clinton L. Lewis, after his graduation from Harvard Law School in 1968. Clinton Lewis remained a friend of the Cooper and Fugett families after Carolyn remarried.

As a student at Virginia State College, Reginald F. Lewis knew what he wanted out of life. This rigid schedule he put together at the beginning of a semester reflects his discipline as a student. The caption at the bottom, “To be a good lawyer, one must study hard,” served as a constant reminder of his ultimate goal.

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Though most of the alumni expressed an intention to continue to work within white society, many acknowledged that the goal of blacks should be to create institutions independent of whites, and a few expressed outright hostility to white institutions including the Law School. Yet all of them agreed that a Harvard Law degree conferred special status on black lawyers and placed them in a peculiar middle ground between the white establishment and the black community.

The predominant youth of the alumni group reflected the recent trend of increasing black enrollment at the Law School. Nine of the 11 alumni graduated from HLS within the past six years, when black enrollment had expanded to meet the demands of the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

The conference began with a morning panel discussion on “Nixon Administration Policies and no effort to defend the national leadership, but rather justified their jobs as a valuable training experience for black attorneys. Patricia A. King ’69, Deputy Director of the Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, urged blacks not to be “shortsighted.” She said, “If we’re going to set up our own institutions, we need to know what the hell we’re doing.” She named the Tax Division of the Justice Department, the National Labor Relations Board, and the Securities and Exchange Commission as good locations for “short-term experience” for black lawyers.

Frederick L. Brown ’67, New England regional counsel for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, told his audience “your Harvard Law School education will be the single most impressive thing that happens to you.” He said, “The best courses are the least interesting and stimulating ones. What you should avoid is becoming social workers.”

Mark MacNeil

Afternoon panel participants (left to right): Richard Banks, Claude Pickens, BLSA Chairman John Daniels, 2L, Reginald Gilliam, Reginald Lewis, Weldon Rougeau, Clarence Ferguson, Robert Washington.

Their Effect on the Practice of Law.” Massachusetts Secretary of Community Development Thomas I. Atkins ’69, a former Boston City Councillor, described the two major effects of the Nixon Administration as being “the elimination of priorities-setting at the national level” and the “shifting of control of local priorities back to the local level” and away from the federal government, through revenue sharing. He urged black law students and lawyers to shift their attention to the functioning of state and local government, saying, “If you study the national government, you’re preparing for the past.”

Two current Nixon Administration officials made

Bishop C. Holifield ’69, Deputy Director of the Florida A & M Business Development Corporation, an organization specializing in assisting minority business enterprises, strongly urged blacks to “set up our own institutions. And nothing is more important than establishment of black law firms.” He said blacks must become independent of the “whims and caprices of the man in Washington.”

In response to a question, Atkins scored the failure of black professionals to provide leadership for their community. He said, “In order to become leaders, the first thing black lawyers must do is get down in the street and take the same shit as their brothers.” He noted, however, that there is

HARVARC LAW RECORD

In the fall of 1973, Reginald F. Lewis (fifth from left) was invited back to Harvard to take part in a conference focusing on minority issues in higher education.

After a six-month courtship, Reginald F. Lewis flew to the Philippines to marry Loida. After the ceremony, bride and groom pass through a garden on their way to the reception. Lourdes Gardose, Loida’s niece, is the train bearer.
Photo credit
: Wedding Philippines, Inc.