A Black for G.M.'s Board

When a dissident stockholder at General Motors' annual meeting last May asked why the world's largest manufacturer had no black directors. Chairman James Roche replied blandly: "Because none have been elected." Behind that blase front, G.M. management has been more concerned than it has ever admitted by insistent charges that it does not show enough social responsibility. The charges have been leveled primarily by Ralph Nader and his followers in "Campaign G.M." The workers in Campaign G.M. raised a ruckus at the last annual meeting and are now ready to begin soliciting proxies for the next one. But General Motors is not waiting. Last week the corporation elected a black to its 23-man board. He is the Rev. Leon H. Sullivan, who was once assistant pastor to Adam Clayton Powell at Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church, and more recently has specialized in persuading or pushing U.S. industry to hire Negro workers. His election raises the number of blacks known to be on boards of major U.S. companies to eight.*

A tall (6 ft. 5 in.), powerfully built and forcefully spoken pastor, Sullivan will bring to the board a valuable sensitivity to current trends. He first came to prominence in the early 1960s, when he organized boycotts against companies that ignored his pleas to hire more blacks. Later he switched his emphasis to training blacks for industrial jobs; in 1964 he opened Opportunities Industrialization Center in an abandoned Philadelphia police station. With funds raised mostly from the white business community, O.I.C. has since opened branches in some 90 other U.S. cities, and trained an estimated 10,000 workers for factory jobs. Sullivan himself has picked up a dozen honorary degrees and the ability to talk the business language of his new G.M. associates; by now he is well acquainted with capital budgeting and cost-benefit ratios.

How much influence Sullivan is likely to have on G.M. remains to be seen. In recent years the board has been dominated by the views of Retired Chairman Frederic Donner, 68, veteran of a time when the auto was king and major corporations were only timidly criticized. Sullivan says, "I perfectly well realize that I was chosen because I am a black man," but he does not intend to become a monument to corporate tokenism. Blacks account for 14% of G.M.'s employment in the U.S., but own only twelve of the company's 13,600 dealerships. "If I am going to stay on the board," says Sullivan, "they are going to have to have many more black dealers--and black salesmen."

*Others recently elected include: William T. Coleman of Pan American, Thomas A. Wood of Chase Manhattan, Clifton R. Wharton of the Equitable Life Assurance Society.

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