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Still, there is no quarreling with the fact that blacks have been moving into skilled and managerial jobs. Besides a generally fast-expanding economy in the past decade, there have been other contributing factors: pressure from the Federal Government to end discrimination in the marketplace; a more enlightened attitude on the part of business leaders, who actively recruit blacks; and of course the pertinacity of blacks themselves who recognize their opportunities and seize them. Surveying the job market from the vantage point of more than 30 years as publisher of Ebony, John H. Johnson marvels at the change. When he first started publishing, he saw only white faces in the business world. "But today," he says, "the bank officer who approved our $1.4 million loan was black. I know that a vice president of Columbia Records or our new representative from IBM is just as likely to be black as white. If someone comes to audit my taxes, chances are that that 'someone' will be black—and a woman too. There are black bankers in Chicago, the deputy police superintendent is black, the general manager of one of the major taxi companies is black. Yet when I came to Chicago in 1933, there were no black taxi drivers."
Blacks have by no means been totally accepted in the upper echelons of big business. Almost all top corporation officers are white, and, for that matter, most are white Anglo-Saxon. "It is more profitable for a young black man to think he can rise to be President of the U.S. than it is for him to think he can become president of a FORTUNE 500 company," says Richard Clarke, the employment recruiter. Many black executives are referred to by other Negroes as H.N.l.C.s (Head Nigger in Charge); they are assigned to public relations jobs or marketing to black customers but are isolated from real decision making. Yet quite a few blacks are climbing up the corporate ladder. In central Indiana, where the Ku Klux Klan once marauded, three blacks have risen to high management positions at the Cummins Engine Co. of Columbus. There are so many black bankers in Atlanta that they scarcely stir much interest any more, though eyebrows lifted when William Allison, a black antipoverty administrator, was recently named to the prestigious board of the Coca-Cola Co. By the latest count, 72 blacks serve as board members of major U.S. corporations, including General Motors, Ford, Chrysler and IBM. Says Bradley Currey Jr., president of Atlanta's Chamber of Commerce: "The trend is clearly away from tokenism."