Black History: Still Building Wall Street One Brick and Millions of Dollars at a Time

During February, Black History Month, our nation reflects on past heroes and heroines of African lineage whose accomplishments, inventions, leadership, and innovations within the arts, sciences, and humanities have made a significant difference. Each February here on my blog I post stories, articles, and media content focused on perhaps lesser known yet emerging formidable black historical figures – men and women from throughout the African Diaspora who have made historical contributions to the great American experiment in Democracy and to the advancement of human civilization.

This February 2021 I’ve included a tribute to a friend and fellow Fisk University alumnus Rey Glover, whose tireless advocacy for education and whose brilliance as both litigator and corporate leader emerge in sharp relief considering his untimely passing in 2007. He died in his Bronzeville home on Chicago’s South-side at the age of 64 of complications from pancreatic cancer, according to his wife, Pamela.

Reynaldo P. Glover, an attorney and onetime Board Chairman of the City Colleges of Chicago, was President of the company that sold the final remnants of what was once the Beatrice International Food Company. Years ago I read the biography of Renaldo Glover’s Harvard Law classmate and business associate Reggie Lewis (a Morgan State University grad), architect of then the largest leveraged buy-out on record involving Beatrice Foods, the book entitled, “Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun”? offering a view of the risks and potential wind-falls and rewards endemic to investment capital and financial markets within big-stakes corporate take-overs on Wall Street. Beatrice Foods was created by the 1987 leveraged buyout of Beatrice International for $985 million by Reginald Lewis and for several years was the largest African-American owned business in the U.S. As a result of that transaction, Lewis created the first black-owned conglomerate to generate more than $1 billion in annualized revenues and inspired generations of black dealmakers on Wall Street.

Mr. Glover was a classmate of Lewis at Harvard Law School, and had set Lewis up on a date with his future wife, Loida a brilliant young law student from the Philippines. Reginald Lewis died in 1993, and Loida Lewis took over as Chairman and Chief Executive shortly thereafter. Glover became General Counsel of TLC Beatrice International Holdings in 1994, adding the title of Executive Vice President a year later. Later named President of TLC Beatrice, Mr. Glover commuted each week to the company’s office in New York, maintaining his home in Chicago. Much of TLC Beatrice’s holdings had been sold off by the mid-1990s, and in 1999 the board approved the final liquidation of the company’s assets, Loida Lewis said. Mr. Glover, an attorney with DLA Piper in Chicago, handled legal matters related to the liquidation. “He was crucial in our maneuvering toward the success of getting the best shareholder value,” said Loida Lewis, chairman of what is now TLC-LC.

Mr. Glover grew up in Gary, Indiana, and attended Fisk University in Nashville before getting his law degree from Harvard. While at Harvard, the intransigence of racial prejudice was made clear to him when an examiner with Selective Service refused to believe he was a student at the prestigious university, his wife said. That experience led him to take a job with the Law Students Civil Rights Research Council in New York after his graduation from law school. For a time, he was the group’s National Executive Director.

Returning to Chicago, Mr. Glover was a partner at firms including Jenner & Block and Isham, Lincoln & Beale before his association with DLA Piper. He was appointed Chairman of City Colleges in 1988 by then-Mayor Eugene Sawyer. He resigned from the post in 1991. An avid Scuba Diver and a basketball star at Gary Roosevelt High School and at Fisk, Mr. Glover continued to play pick-up games throughout his life, said longtime friend and business colleague, Barbara Bowles. He collected African-American art and was an accomplished archer and member of the Chicago Archery Association. In 2003, he was elected Chairman of the Board of Trustees at Fisk, where he backed a controversial sale of artwork by Georgia O’Keeffe owned by the university. The proposed sale was eventually liquidated.

Mr. Glover’s first marriage was to Sonji Clay, former wife of Mohammed Ali. He was divorced twice. He is survived by three sons, Brian, Reynaldo Jr., and Ryan; a stepson, Jharett Brantley; a daughter, Shea; three brothers, Clark Walls, Francoise and Chris Harris; and a grandson.

One could not help but marvel over the grit and determination of these two young, gifted and Black entrepreneurial graduates of HBCUs, whose trajectory as dealmakers and trailblazers could not have been readily foreseen from the streets and gymnasiums and row houses of Lewis’s hometown of Baltimore and Glover’s Midwestern blue-collar melting pot hometown of Gary, Indiana. Both men helped change forever the dynamics of Wall Street by transforming perceptions of black financial acumen when fused with opportunity, talent and ingenuity.