The Rarest Breed of Women

Heeding the call for social responsibility, many corporations now try to fill managerial posts with blacks or women. An even more logical solution, though, would be to employ persons who can meet the demands of both the N.A.A.C.P. and Women's Lib: black businesswomen. Is this rare breed finally emerging? The answer depends on where one looks. Black businesswomen are practically nonexistent in the executive suites of major corporations. The other side of the token is that they have begun to appear in fields as varied as advertising, stockbrokerage and banking.

To succeed, they must overcome twin prejudices, and that takes courage, persistence and no small measure of competence. By displaying all of these, Barbara Edwards, 31, who was a secretary in California's Northwestern Title Co. eight years ago, has risen to vice president and head of the escrow firm's branch in Berkeley. "I never felt that being black held me back," she says. "It just made me work harder." Similarly, Victoria Lynn Sanders, 27, studied fashion design and retailing before she saw a better opportunity in the financial world. Starting as a research assistant in 1966, she now is Chicago's only black woman stockbroker. She works at DuPont, Glore, Forgan Inc., where she puts in twelve-hour days and has 400 clients. "When you are making money for people, they don't care who you are," she says. "You could be pink with blue polka dots."

Like most black businesswomen. Miss Sanders believes that Black Power without green power is meaningless. "Blacks now are making enough money to invest in the stock market, but few know anything about it," she says. To help remedy that, she teaches a course in investing at a business college on Chicago's predominantly black West Side. Her own goal is to be a millionaire by age 30.

A Matter of Taste. Black businesswomen can provide a bridge to the $45 billion-a-year Negro consumer market. In Kansas City, Inez Kaiser started her own integrated firm, which specializes in market consulting and earns more than $100,000 a year. "I try to tell white businessmen," she says, "that black is now, black is profit, black is here to stay." In Chicago, Barbara Proctor, president and owner of Proctor and Gardner Advertising Inc., argues that U.S. tastes today originate in the black community, then gradually spread to more affluent whites. She therefore advises her clients--including the Jewel supermarket chain and Sears, Roebuck's local branch--to aim their ads in the Negro-oriented newspaper and radio media not only at black families but also the white students attending colleges in predominantly black communities. The agency's billings this year: almost $1.000,000.

The right job can sometimes offer the means of correcting racial wrongs. After completing a company training program, Cheryl Beverly, 25, chose to become a services officer at the Wells Fargo Bank in Encino, Calif., mainly because "the usual regulations and standards seem to work out so that black people don't get loans." By making those loans, she believes "I can be in the middle of changing things."

Atlanta's Barbara Fouch concentrates more on appearances. She left full-time modeling in 1969 to become vice president and part owner of the integrated Peachtree Center Models, Inc., which now has annual billings of $180,000. She also has won four antipoverty contracts totaling $70,000 from the Federal Government to teach slum children etiquette, posture and neatness--to help make it easier for them to get jobs.

The Scary Thing. Black businesswomen often contend that the toughest prejudice that they face is not racist but sexist. Rosanna Wright, 30, president of Wright-Edlen Advertising Inc. in Los Angeles, takes the most optimistic view. "White men find it easier to work with a black woman than with a black man," she says. "They don't expect women to succeed, so they figure that they might as well help us along. Still, it's a struggle." Adds Shirley Barnes Kulunda, an account executive with Manhattan's J. Walter Thompson ad agency: "When white businessmen look at us, they still see a female, and how far up the ladder can a female go? That's the thing that is scary. Women cannot get beyond the middle-management level."

Do the black businesswomen turn to Women's Lib for help? Not at all. Explains Kansas City's Inez Kaiser: "This Women's Lib thing is created by a bunch of frustrated, middle-class white women who want to be liberated from the boredom of housekeeping. Black women have always had to work."

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