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Clifton Reginald Wharton Jr. (1926- )
Clifton R. Wharton, Jr. has combined careers in business, higher education, foreign economic development, and philanthropy. The son of Clifton Wharton, Sr., who served 40 years in the U. S. Foreign Service, Wharton began school in the Canary Islands while his father was a diplomat assigned there. He next attended the Boston Latin School in Massachusetts and, at 16, entered Harvard University. He graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in history in 1947. Later that year, he became the first Black student to earn a M.A. degree in International Studies from Johns Hopkins University in Maryland.
At Harvard, Wharton became the first Black announcer at the campus radio station and the first Black secretary of the National Student Association, a lobbying group he founded. He was the first African-American accepted into the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University earning an MA in 1948. In 1969, he was appointed a director of the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States, becoming the first Black person to sit on the board of one of the ten largest U.S. corporations.
Interested in international technical assistance and economic development, Wharton’s first job was as a research associate evaluating U. S. technical assistance in Latin America. He was a graduate student in Economics at the University of Chicago in Illinois at the time. In 1958, he became the first African American to receive a Ph.D. in Economics from that institution.
In 1958, Wharton took his first full-time post, serving with the Agriculture Development Council (ADC), a non-governmental agency, which was concerned at that time with the population explosion threatening mass starvation in Asia. The ADC was formed in 1953 as a non-profit in the field of agrarian reform in Asia. Between 1958 and 1964, he directed Council programs in Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, and Cambodia. He rose to Executive Director in 1966 and Vice President in 1967.
In 1969, Wharton was appointed President of Michigan State University (MSU). This was the first appointment of an African-American to head a major university. His appointment came during an era of often violent student protests against racism and war. When the U.S. military invaded Cambodia on April 30, 1970, expanding the Vietnam War, Wharton shared the frustration and anger of many of the MSU students. Addressing student protests in the wake of the invasion, Wharton differed from every other major university president when he offered to personally take student petitions against the war to Michigan’s congressional delegation in Washington, D.C.
Wharton remained at Michigan State University until 1978, when he was appointed Chancellor of the State University of New York’s (SUNY) 64 campuses. He held the position until 1987. Afterward, he briefly served as Chairman of the Rockefeller Foundation and later in 1987, was appointed President and CEO of the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association and the College Retirement Equities Fund (TIAA-CREF), making him the first Black CEO of a Fortune 500 Company. He remained in that position until 1993, when he became Deputy Secretary of State in the Administration of President Bill Clinton.
Wharton has authored a book as well as numerous articles on topics such as agriculture, poverty, leadership, diplomacy, national security, and investing. He has also received a number of honorary doctorates. In 1994, he received the American Council on Education Distinguished Service Award for Lifetime Achievement. Dr. Wharton is a member of the Sigma Pi Phi fraternity.
Wharton and wife Dolores, a retired corporate director and foundation executive, have been married since 1950. They raised two sons and reside in New York City.
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Clifton Reginald Wharton Jr. | |
|---|---|
 Wharton in 1987 | |
| 11th United States Deputy Secretary of State | |
| In office January 27, 1993 – November 8, 1993 | |
| President | Bill Clinton |
| Preceded by | Lawrence Eagleburger |
| Succeeded by | Strobe Talbott |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Clifton Reginald Wharton Jr. September 13, 1926 Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Died | November 16, 2024 (aged 98) New York City, U.S. |
| Spouse | Dolores Duncan (m. 1950) |
| Children | 2 |
| Parent |
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Clifton Reginald Wharton Jr. (September 13, 1926 – November 16, 2024) was an American university president, corporate executive and former United States deputy secretary of state.[1] In his multiple careers, he has been an African-American pioneer.[vague]
Early life and career
[edit]Born in Boston, his father Clifton Reginald Wharton Sr. was a 40-year Foreign Service officer and the first African-American to pass the Foreign Service exam and to become a career ambassador. He graduated from Boston Latin School and entered Harvard College at 16. While there, he was national secretary and a founding member of the U.S. National Students Association. He was the first African American to earn a Master of Arts degree in international affairs from the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University and later graduated from University of Chicago with a master of arts and a Ph.D. in economics.[2]
Reporters and profiles have regularly described Wharton "Such has been the life of Clifton Wharton, whose career in higher education and business, foreign economic development, and philanthropy has included so many firsts – often without much fanfare—that he is sometimes called "the quiet pioneer."[3] In the course of his career, Wharton had become a black member of the establishment rather than a member of the black establishment.[4]
Wharton's first 22-year philanthropic career began in Latin America with Nelson Rockefeller. Subsequently, he was resident in Southeast Asia from 1958 to 1964 representing a foundation headed by John D. Rockefeller 3rd. During this period he also supervised the foundation's programs in Thailand, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, as well as taught economics at the University of Malaya. Many of his students and grantees became leaders in the region. His research ranged from the supply response of Southeast Asian perennial crops and international trade to the economics of subsistence agriculture and the impact of the Green Revolution. He was a member of the Presidential Mission to Vietnam in 1966 and of the Rockefeller presidential mission to Latin America in 1969. Wharton was appointed chairman of the Board for International Food and Agricultural Development at USAID by President Gerald Ford, where he served for eight years (1976–83) and was succeeded by E. T. York. He was also co-Chairman of the Commission on Security and Economic Assistance, U.S. Department of State (1983), and member of the Presidential Advisory Committee on Trade Policy (1991–92). Wharton has published articles in numerous professional journals and is the author of Subsistence Agriculture and Economic Development (Aldine Press 1969) and co-author with Theodore M. Hesburgh and Paul A. Miller of Patterns for Lifelong Learning (Jossey-Bass 1973). In February 1969 he was elected to the board of Equitable Life, becoming the second black corporate director in the U.S. He later became a director of eight other U.S. corporations.
On October 17, 1969, Wharton was elected president of Michigan State University thereby becoming the first African-American president of a major U.S. university; although preceded by Patrick Francis Healy at Georgetown University, Healy's racial background was not widely known during Healy's lifetime.[5] The New York Times story lead was: "Negro Pacesetter – Clifton Wharton has done it again. As the newly appointed president of Michigan State University, Dr. Wharton will be the first Negro president of a major predominantly white college in the country."[6] Wharton's term of office, from 1970 to 1978, was often a turbulent one, featuring student demonstrations in 1970 and 1972. His major achievements were his successful efforts to maintain the quality of MSU's academic programs despite budget reductions, his commitment to the education of the economically and educationally disadvantaged, and the integration of the Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medicine with the other medical schools. Major innovations implemented under Wharton's tenure included the Presidential Commission on Admissions and Student Body Composition to study future enrollment policies and a Presidential Fellows Program to allow selected students and junior faculty members to gain experience in university administration. Wharton's most lasting contribution to the university was the completion of a new center for the performing arts. The building, dedicated in 1982, was named in honor of Wharton and his wife Dolores, in recognition of the strong support, which they gave the project.[7] The university's Wharton Center for Performing Arts is named for him and for his wife, Dolores.[8]
In 1978, he became chancellor (president) of the 64-campus State University of New York system.[9] Again he was identified as the first African-American to head the largest university system in the nation. During his nine-year tenure, he achieved greater management flexibility for the university, strengthened the university's research capability, and dramatically improved the quality image of the university. SUNY Chairman Donald M. Blinken stated that Wharton's most enduring achievement was the Independent Commission and the flexibility legislation.[10]
In 1982 he was named chairman of the Rockefeller Foundation succeeding Father Theodore Hesburgh and served as a trustee for 17 years. In 1987 he became CEO of TIAA-CREF, the giant pension and financial services company, making him first Black chairman and CEO of a major U.S. corporation.[11][12] A cartoon on the cover of the March 27, 1988 New York Times,[13] showed Wharton walking a tightrope across the chasm of Wall Street while carrying a safe whose contents of currency were spilling out. The unspoken question was whether he would successfully reach the other side safely without losing all the pension assets.
Wharton's performance in turning around this corporation was highlighted by Professor Michael Useem, director of the Center for Leadership and Change Management at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania (unrelated), as an exemplary example of corporate leadership.[14] "Wharton had lived up to his reputation as a crisis manager. In the course of only nine months, he had initiated dramatic changes in the structure and methods of the venerable pension fund." Robert Atwell, president of the American Council on Education, characterized Wharton's impact, "In no time at all, with dizzying speed turned all that around...I have probably never seen a more spectacular performance."[15] Among Wharton's former corporate directorships are Ford Motor Company, Time-Warner, Equitable Life, Tenneco Inc., Federated Department Stores, Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), New York Stock Exchange, Harcourt General, TIAA-CREF, and vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Wharton has served six presidents in foreign policy advisory posts.
Wharton served as deputy secretary of state (the number-two position in the department) from January 27 to November 8, 1993, under President Bill Clinton. Wharton's portfolio included the reorganization of the State Department, the foreign aid budget and the restructuring of the Agency for International Development, but he was not directly involved in the formulation of the policies that ran into trouble at State. Nevertheless, he was forced to resign after Secretary Warren Christopher leaked rumors of his disappointment with Wharton's performance on the job. Editorials and op-eds commented that Wharton was unfairly cast as a scapegoat for the failures of Clinton's foreign policies since Wharton had not been involved in foreign policy.[16]
Wharton was a member and co-chairman of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, and was a trustee of the Clark Foundation, Bassett Hospital, and the American Assembly. He served as chairman of the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges, 1981–82, and received the President's Award on World Hunger in 1983. In 1994 he received the American Council on Education Distinguished Service Award for Lifetime Achievement, and in 2005 the John Hope Franklin Award. In 2015 his name was placed on the frieze of Boston Latin School's Assembly Hall.
Personal life and death
[edit]His wife, Dolores D. Wharton, has had her own career as a corporate director, foundation executive, and arts advocate. She retired as the chairman and chief executive officer of The Fund for Corporate Initiatives, Inc., a non-profit organization which she founded to strengthen the role of minorities and women in the corporate world. Among her former corporate directorships are Phillips Petroleum, Kellogg Co., and Gannett (media) on each she was the first woman and first black director. Her other prior boards include COMSAT, Michigan Bell Telephone, NY Telephone, and Capital Bank and Trust (Albany, New York). In the area of the arts, Wharton was appointed by President Ford to the National Council on the Arts of the National Endowment for the Arts (1974–1980). She was appointed by Governor Milliken to the Michigan Council for the Arts (1971–1975). She also was a trustee of the Museum of Modern Art (1977–1987), the Detroit Institute of the Arts, and the Albany Institute of History and Art (1980–1987). During her residency in Southeast Asia (1958–64), she conducted a survey of the artists of Malaysia which was published in 1972 as a book, "Contemporary Artists of Malaysia: A Biographic Survey", by the Asia Society of New York.
Dolores Wharton was formerly a member of the board of governors of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1987–1994) and has been a trustee of such organizations as the Asia Society, the Aspen Institute, Albany Law School, and the Fashion Institute of Technology. Mrs. Wharton holds a B.A. degree in fine arts from Chicago State University and nine honorary Doctors of Humane Letters.
The Whartons raised two sons: Bruce Wharton, and Clifton R Wharton III. Wharton received 63 honorary doctorates. Wharton's Harvard University honorary degree of 1992 citation read, "One of the commanding leaders of our time, yours is the great talent to transform organizations into communities of purpose working devotedly together to serve the common good of all people from all backgrounds." His autobiography, Privilege and Prejudice: The Life of a Black Pioneer, was published in August 2015 by Michigan State University Press.
Clifton R. Wharton Jr. died from cancer in Manhattan, New York, on November 16, 2024, at the age of 98.[17][18]
References
[edit]- ^ Ifill, Gwen (December 23, 1992). "THE TRANSITION; CHRISTOPHER AND ASPIN NAMED FOR STATE DEPT. AND PENTAGON". The New York Times. Retrieved August 11, 2008.
- ^ Wharton, Clifton R., Privilege and Prejudice: The Life of a Black Pioneer (East Lansing, Michigan: Michigan State University Press, 2015), 1-52.
- ^ Clifton R. Wharton Jr., SAIS '48, A Lifetime of Firsts", Johns Hopkins Alumni News, September 2001.....
- ^ L. J. Davis, "Clifton Wharton Struggles to Preserve a $60 Billion Pension Fund", Business World, New York Times, March 27, 1988.
- ^ Redden, Molly (April 14, 2010). "On the Record: Georgetown and the racial identity of President Patrick Healy". Georgetown Voice. Archived from the original on May 17, 2017. Retrieved February 9, 2021.
- ^ "Negro Economist Is Named Head of Michigan State U.; Clifton Wharton, Negro Economist is Named Head of Michigan State U.", New York Times, October 18, 1969, p. 1; "Michigan State Chief, Clifton Reginald Wharton Jr.", Man in the News, New York Times, October 18, 1969. Joseph E. Wolff, "New MSU President: A Man Of Many Firsts", Detroit News, October 17, 1969.
- ^ Clifton R. Wharton biography, Wharton Center, Michigan State University, 2009
- ^ The Wharton Center for Performing Arts. "About". Archived from the original on November 3, 2009. Retrieved April 6, 2009.
- ^ The State University of New York (1985). Sixty-four campuses: the State University of New York to 1985 (1 ed.). Albany, New York: Office of University Affairs and Development. OCLC 12556911.
- ^ Sharon Gazin, "Wharton is Hailed for Research Push, University Flexibility", Albany Times Union, October 17, 1986.
- ^ Samuel Weiss, "State U. Chief to Resign to Become Head of $50 Billion Pension Fund", New York Times, October 16, 1986; Joan Potter, "Who Was the First African-American to Head a Fortune 100 Company?", African American Firsts: Famous Little-Known and Unsung Triumphs of Blacks", (Paperback, Dafina Books, November 2002) p. 12-13.
- ^ B. Davis Schwartz Memorial Library. "1987". AFRICAN-AMERICANS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. Long Island University. Archived from the original on April 4, 2009. Retrieved April 6, 2009.
Clifton R. Wharton was appointed Chairman and CEO of TIAA-CREF, the 19th largest U.S. Fortune 500 company (assets of $290 billion), thereby becoming the first Black chairman and CEO of a major U.S. corporation. He served until 1993, when he became Deputy Secretary of State under President Clinton. He was also the first African-American to be elected as chairman of the Rockefeller Foundation in 1982.
- ^ L. J. Davis, "Precious Cargo, The $60 billion challenge: Clifton Wharton struggles to preserve a pension fund", The Business World, New York Times, March 27, 1988. The cartoon by Roth matched the story's summary lead: "Clifton Wharton took over the nation's largest pension fund as TIAA-CREF was besieged by angry policyholders. Can his bold strategy and persuasive style turn the tide?"
- ^ Michael Useem, "Clifton Wharton Restructures TIAA-CREF", The Leadership Moment: Nine True Stories of Triumph and Disaster and Their Lessons for Us All, Chapter 6 (New York: Three Rivers Press, January 1998)
- ^ Michell Osborn, "The Wharton School, Clifton Wharton gives pension fund giant a lesson in turnarounds", USA Today, October 2, 1991. See also, "Forcing an Old Pension Fund to Learn a Few New Tricks", Business Week, July 18, 1988; Hilary Rosenberg, "The education of TIAA-CREF, Clif Wharton has pushed the giant teachers' pension plan into the modern era", Cover Story, Institutional Investor, April 1989; and "Not So Silent Partner." Cover Story, Chief Executive, November/December 1990.
- ^ Elaine Sciolino, "With Foreign Policies Under Fire, Top State Dept. Deputy is Ousted", New York Times, November 9, 1993; A. M. Rosenthal, "On My Mind, The Wharton Case", Op. Ed., New York Times, December 3, 1993; "Mr. Wharton as Scapegoat, ...If true, he's taking the fall for Warren Christopher's disarray" Editorial, Albany Times Union, November 5, 1993; Carla Anne Robbins, "State Department's Clifton Wharton Resigns as the Agency's No. 2 Official", Wall Street Journal, November 9, 1993; "Christopher's Top Deputy Announces Resignation, Wharton Blames Leaks for Move", Baltimore Sun, November 9, 1993; Carl Rowan, "Clinton fiddled while black diplomat burned", Newark Star Ledger, November 19, 1993; Chuck Stone, "Clinton executes second political lynching", Kalamazoo Gazette, November 15, 1993.
- ^ "Black American Pioneer, Dr. Clifton R. Wharton Jr, Dies At 98". Accesswire. November 17, 2024. Retrieved November 17, 2024.
- ^ "Clifton R. Wharton Jr., Who Broke Racial Barriers, Is Dead at 98". The New York Times. November 17, 2024. Retrieved November 17, 2024.
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Clifton R. Wharton Jr., Who Broke Racial Barriers, Is Dead at 98
He was the first African American to become president of a large white university, C.E.O. of a major corporation and deputy secretary of state.
When Clifton R. Wharton Jr. was appointed president of Michigan State University in 1969, he became the first African American in the nation to be named to head a major, predominantly white university.
For Dr. Wharton, it was just one of many firsts.
He was the first Black chancellor of the State University of New York. He was the first African American to run a Fortune 500 corporation, and the first to become deputy secretary of state, serving in the Clinton administration.
His remarkable firsts often went unheralded, earning him the nickname “the quiet pioneer.”
But Dr. Wharton, who died of cancer at 98 on Saturday in Manhattan, made clear that, though race was important, it was not the driving force in his long life of achievement.
“I’m a man first, an American second and a Black man third,” he told The New York Times after he was named president of Michigan State at age 43. “I do feel my appointment at Michigan is an important symbolic occasion, but that is not the criterion of it. It shows that if one has the skill and the talent, you’re going to make it.”
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The son of a career diplomat, Dr. Wharton grew up with a worldview that was propelled by working for many years in far-flung corners of the globe. At his Harvard graduation in 1947, listening to the commencement speaker, Gen. George Marshall, talk about plans for postwar Europe, Dr. Wharton was inspired to pursue international development. A deep interest in Latin America led to a close association with Nelson Rockefeller and five years of development work in rural Venezuela, Brazil and Costa Rica.
Dr. Wharton was determined to improve the lives of people in emerging economies, developing a special interest in agriculture. As vice president of the Agricultural Development Council, he focused on countries in Asia, where he lived, taught, and conducted agricultural growth programs and research.
He constantly found himself on short lists for leadership positions in government, philanthropy, academia and business. But despite boasting a résumé that would be the envy of any accomplished professional, he always asked himself whether he was being sought after because of his skin color rather than his achievements.
In his 2015 autobiography, “Privilege and Prejudice: The Life of a Black Pioneer,” Dr. Wharton painted a picture of a driven intellectual who learned early about preparation, humility, consensus-building and the results that could be achieved with a relentless work ethic. “I had the priceless example of two rigorously educated, high-achieving parents before me,” he wrote.
Having been born “to privilege,” he was able to navigate a lifetime of evident prejudice without being stifled by its toxic fallout, he wrote.
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“I strived to compete in a fully integrated fashion within the dominant society, without special help or favor due to my race,” he wrote. He also emphasized “the importance of not allowing racial discrimination or negative expectations to poison one’s sensibilities or deflect one from a chosen path.”
Clifton Reginald Wharton Jr., the oldest of four children, was born on Sept. 13, 1926, in Boston.
His father, Clifton Sr., was the first African American career ambassador in the U.S. Foreign Service. In 1961, he was appointed ambassador to Norway by President John F. Kennedy, becoming the first Black ambassador to a European nation. Dr. Wharton’s mother, Harriette Mae (Banks) Wharton, had a master’s degree in social work and taught at Virginia Normal and Industrial Institute, a historically Black college that later became Virginia State University.
Clifton Jr. spent his early childhood in the Canary Islands of Spain and became fluent in Spanish. Back in the United States, he attended the Boston Latin School and went on to Harvard at age 16. He interrupted his studies in 1945 to join the Army Air Corps as a pilot at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, but the war ended before he could see combat, and he returned to Harvard, where he earned a degree in history.
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At Tuskegee, he encountered venomous racism. “I learned that racial prejudice is an insidious fog which enters your pores to pierce your soul by destroying your self-worth and denying your humanity — but that succeeds only if you let it,” he wrote.
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After Harvard, he became the first African American to attend Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, where he earned a master’s degree in international affairs.
While at Harvard, he met his future wife, Dolores Duncan, on a blind date at a dance at Radcliffe College in Cambridge. She had grown up in Harlem, where she studied modern dance with Martha Graham, and her mother was a friend of the opera star Marian Anderson. The couple married at Ms. Anderson’s estate in Danbury, Conn., in 1950. A proponent of the arts who sat on several corporate boards, Dolores Wharton was appointed by President Gerald R. Ford to the National Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Dr. Wharton in 1958 became the first African American to receive a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago. There he was mentored by Theodore Schultz, an economist and future Nobel laureate whose specialty was evaluating technical assistance in Latin America. That same year, Dr. Wharton joined the Agricultural Development Council, a private, nonprofit program created by John D. Rockefeller III. He spent six years in Singapore and Malaysia, his family in tow, and visited several other Southeast Asia nations.
“I am at heart an internationalist,” Dr. Wharton told Inside Higher Ed magazine in 2015. “Therefore, for me, the search for knowledge and the intellectual world are not centered in one nation.”
In 1969, Michigan State’s board voted 5 to 3 to make Dr. Wharton the first Black president of a major, predominantly white university. (Patrick Francis Healy, a Jesuit priest who was of mixed race, became president of Georgetown University in 1874. He passed for white his entire life, including his time at Georgetown, which at the time had fewer than 200 students.)
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In November 1969, Dr. Wharton was introduced as president-elect to a thunderous standing ovation before 77,000 fans at a Michigan State home football game in East Lansing. The honeymoon ended just weeks later, when civil rights and antiwar protests swept campuses nationwide. Dr. Wharton found himself face to face with hundreds of angry students protesting President Richard M. Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia. Black students questioned whose side he was on as racial tensions enveloped the nation.
“What was most impressive was how calm he was,” recalled Teresa Sullivan, who was then a Michigan State student and who later became president of the University of Virginia. “Student demonstrators were swearing in his face, and he never lost his cool.”
Dr. Wharton’s eight-year tenure was considered a success. He worked to bring more diversity to Michigan State, establishing a commission to study enrollment policies. With his wife, he led the effort to build a world-class performance venue on campus, which was dedicated in 1982 as the Wharton Center for Performing Arts.
Dr. Wharton became the first African American chancellor of the 64-campus State University of New York system in 1978.
SUNY, with its 345,000 students, was the largest college system in the country, and Dr. Wharton faced serious financial pressure and political disdain toward public education. During his first year at SUNY, the president of the Rockefeller Foundation died, and Dr. Wharton was offered that prestigious and influential position. He chose to stay with SUNY, to make good on his commitment. (A longtime trustee on the Rockefeller board, he was named chairman in 1982, another racial first.)
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In his nine years as chancellor, Dr. Wharton earned a reputation for being an advocate of “public higher education in a period of tight fiscal constraints,” The Times said.
Dr. Wharton became the first Black chief executive of a Fortune 500 corporation when he was recruited by the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association-College Retirement Equities Fund in 1986. With $50 billion under management and nearly 900,000 contributors from more than 3,800 colleges, universities and educational associations, Teachers Insurance was the largest pension fund and third largest insurance company in the country.
Dr. Wharton set about reorganizing the company, now known as TIAA. In his six-year stint, he converted a “stodgy professors’ pension fund” into one of the biggest and fastest-growing financial-services companies, according to Newsweek.
Again, opportunity came knocking. When Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992, he asked Dr. Wharton to join his administration. Despite some misgivings, Dr. Wharton agreed, and in January 1993 he was named deputy secretary of state to Warren M. Christopher, becoming the highest ranking African American in State Department history, until Colin Powell was appointed secretary in 2001.
Dr. Wharton’s short tenure at the department was a contentious one. He felt frustration at being left out of important meetings and rarely saw eye to eye with Mr. Christopher, as the new administration was coming under withering fire for foreign policy failures in Bosnia, Somalia and Haiti. Mr. Christopher was said to be unhappy with Dr. Wharton’s performance and lack of foreign policy experience and pressed for his removal. Dr. Wharton resigned that November rather than accept an ambassadorship.
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Dr. Wharton’s “public humiliation” was denounced in The Times by A.M. Rosenthal, the paper’s former executive editor who had become a columnist. “Mr. Wharton still does not know what hit him,” Mr. Rosenthal wrote. “But pieced together, it is a story of how an Administration failed to do its duty to itself and an American achiever.”
Dr. Wharton went on to serve on numerous corporate boards and remained active in philanthropy and the arts. In 2015, the Boston Latin School, the oldest school in the country, honored him by placing his name on the wall in the school auditorium alongside such distinguished alumni as John Hancock, Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Adams, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Leonard Bernstein.
He is survived by his wife of 74 years, Dolores, and his son Bruce, who confirmed the death. His son Clifton III died of a brain embolism in 2000 at age 48.
Reflecting on his career and the impact of race, Dr. Wharton said he had struggled to understand how different versions of the “badge of Blackness” were perceived.
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“I had been able to overcome barriers in part because I had not constantly waved the flag of racism or the banner of Blackness — either as a dominant reality or an excuse to justify special treatment,” he wrote in his memoir.
“Instead I had committed myself to superior performance to overcome any racism and stereotyping,” he went on. “Why weren’t achievements sufficient evidence of what I — and our people — could achieve if given the opportunity?”
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