Prometheus 6

“When you grow up living in a white corporate world, there’s always a part of you that thinks, ‘Gee, if I sold out,’ or ‘How can I do this and also stay true to myself and true to my own identity,’ ” said Jeh Johnson, another top fund-raiser and New York lawyer who today serves as the informal chairman of the group of black law partners that Mr. Davis first joined three decades ago. “Here we have a guy who’s running for president and managed to do it in the political world and managed to do it so well.”...

Nevertheless, stories of slights, or a nagging sense of “otherness,” are prevalent even among this accomplished group....

Indeed, for all of the signs of progress, there remain feelings of frustration about what has not been accomplished. 

Top Black Donors See Obama’s Rise as Their Own
By MICHAEL LUO

DENVER — When Gordon Davis, a top fund-raiser for Senator Barack Obama, made partner at his white-shoe law firm in 1983, it was a vastly different world for aspiring black professionals like him.

At the time, there were just five black partners at major law firms in New York, Mr. Davis recalled. The group had a tradition of taking each new partner out to an intimate congratulatory lunch. Today, there are more than 200 who take part in the ritual at the Harvard Club.

The advancements of professionals like Mr. Davis over just a few decades have enabled a cadre of black elites to emerge as a significant force in the most prolific fund-raising operation in presidential history.

Mr. Obama’s acceptance of his party’s nomination Thursday, on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech during the March on Washington, would mark a powerful moment of arrival for blacks across the country. But the milestone is especially telling for this upper-crust group, who have mobilized like never before to raise mountains of cash to power his campaign.

“There’s a sense of not only pride but of a point in the culture we’re a part of, the society we’re a part of, that this is different,” said Mr. Davis. “It’s a measure of how far we — and I don’t mean just black people — how far this country and the business world have come.”

There are 57 blacks out of the roughly 300 people on the Obama campaign’s national finance committee. Each member commits to collecting at least $250,000 in campaign contributions, a formidable task that typically requires deep business networks, something relatively few blacks had until fairly recently.

The list of top Obama bundlers includes people like John W. Rogers Jr., the founder of Ariel Investments, the country’s first black-owned money management firm; William Kennard, the first black chairman of the Federal Communications Commission; and Mr. Davis, who drove across the country 45 years ago as a newly minted college graduate to take part in the March on Washington on 1963 and went on to serve as the first black parks commissioner of New York City and the first black president of Lincoln Center.

Mr. Kennard and Mr. Rogers are among a half-dozen black bundlers who have raised more than $500,000 for Mr. Obama, putting them in a select group of just three dozen fund-raisers.

Most of Mr. Obama’s major black donors are new to big-money political fund-raising, but there are signs that at least some could go on to become players in Democratic circles. Some, for example, have already begun flexing their muscle by raising money for politicians who endorsed Mr. Obama early on.

At 67, Mr. Davis is something of an elder statesman for the group. Most are part of a younger generation that has benefited from the new vistas opened by the civil rights movement but had not participated directly in those struggles. Like Mr. Obama, they have learned to navigate white-dominated fields, climbing through the ranks by earning approval not among fellow blacks but whites. Yet they remained keenly aware of the sanctums that were still unavailable to them.

Now, they have finally witnessed a breakthrough at the highest level in the political realm, a culmination of their long struggle for acceptance in a business world dominated by whites.