Sullivan, Leon H. 1922–

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Leon H. Sullivan 1922–

Clergyman, civil rights activist, business leader

American civil rights leader Reverend Leon H. Sullivan’s revelation to Fortune magazine that he was undertaking “a bold new venture” to assist the continent of Africa during the 1990s was no startling proposal from this pastor, who has been a life-long social activist. Sullivan, who early in his career accepted the ministry of Zion Baptist Church, which was located in a run-down slum of north Philadelphia, pioneered the protest concept of economic boycott of stores and companies that failed to employ blacks. He also created the job-training agency Opportunities Industrialization Centers of America Inc., which spawned 75 similar centers throughout the country and trained nearly two million people.

Long an advocate of black entrepreneurship, Sullivan led the members of his church to form Zion Investment Associates Inc., which in turn developed Progress Aerospace Enterprises Inc., a company that manufactured aerospace parts and actively created jobs for the unemployed. But he is most famous, perhaps, for devising the Sullivan Principles, a business code by which companies worldwide operating in South Africa enacted equal treatment of black workers—prior to sanctions imposed by the United States in 1987. Upon his retirement from Zion Baptist Church, Sullivan told Fortune that he would shift his focus to the needs of Africa since his “work at the [Zion Baptist] church is done. We finally paid off the mortgage.”

Born October 16, 1922, in Charleston, West Virginia, Sullivan’s parents were divorced when he was a child. Growing up in the alleys of a poor neighborhood, the boy demonstrated unusual intellectual and athletic gifts. During his childhood and adolescence, he avidly pursued religion and sports. At 17, Sullivan became an ordained Baptist minister. After earning an athletic scholarship to play football and basketball, he entered West Virginia State University. When Sullivan lost his scholarship following a knee injury, he worked evenings in a steel mill in order to continue his studies. Furthering his education in New York City, Sullivan obtained a degree in theology from Union Theological Seminary and a degree in sociology from Columbia University during the mid-1940s. Upon graduation, he served as an assistant to Adam Clayton Powell, pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York’s Harlem and later congressman from the State of New York. Sullivan served his initial pastorate at First Baptist Church in South Orange, New Jersey, and was voted president of the South Orange Council of Churches.

At a Glance…

Born Leon Howard Sullivan, October 16, 1922, in Charleston, WV; married Grace Banks; children: Howard, Julie, Hope. Education : West Virginia State College, B.A., 1943; received degree from Union Theological Seminary, 1945; Columbia University, M.A., 1947; Virginia Union University, D.D.

Civil rights leader; pastor, First Baptist Church, South Orange, NJ; president of the South Orange Council of Churches; Zion Baptist Church, Philadelphia, pastor, 1950-88, pastor emeritus, 1988—; Zion Home for Retirement, founder, chairman, 1960—. Founder, director, and chairman of Opportunities Industrialization Centers of America Inc., Zion investment Associates Inc., and Progress Aerospace Enterprises Inc.; cofounder of International Foundation for Education and Self-Help, 1982; organizer of African/African-American Summit, 1991; member of board of directors, General Motors Corporation and Mellon Bank Corporation. Established Leon Howard Sullivan Scholarship Fund, Bentley College, MA, 1988.

Awards: Named one of ten outstanding young men, U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce, 1955; National Publishers Association Award, 1963; Philadelphia Fellowship Communion Award, 1964; Philadelphia Book Award, 1966; American Exemplar Medal, 1969; Leon Howard Sullivan Chair, School of Social Welfare, University of Wisconsin, 1976; Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedom Medal Award, 1987; Presidential Medal of Freedom, 1991; Russwurm Award; more than 30 honorary degrees from various colleges, including Dartmouth, Princeton, Swarthmore, Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Addresses: Office —Progress Plaza Shopping Center, 1501 North Broad St., Philadelphia, PA 19122.

He became the pastor of the Zion Baptist Church in 1950. The Philadelphia neighborhood surrounding the church was overrun with juvenile crime, so Sullivan instituted youth programs to counter the rampant adolescent delinquency and gang warfare. In 1955, as a result of his efforts, he was named an “outstanding young man” by the U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce.

In the late 1950s Sullivan observed that unemployment was a major cause of crime in his area. In response, he organized an economic boycott that opened 3,000 jobs to blacks in Philadelphia in 1961. Job training programs followed the opening of Opportunities Industrialization Centers in 1964. Sullivan also organized his church congregation into shareholders of a company he helped them form, Zion Investment Associates Inc. Progress Aerospace Enterprises Inc., founded in 1968, was one of several economic-improvement projects Sullivan formed after the establishment of Zion Investment Associates. Many organizations and companies, including the Ford Foundation and General Electric Corporation, have contributed funds to Sullivan’s enterprises.

Sullivan devised his now well-known principles of fair business practices in 1977. And though the Sullivan Principles were widely implemented, discrimination against black employees working in South Africa for American companies continued to consume him. Disillusioned over the disregard for his principles there, he urged the U.S. government to institute sanctions against South Africa in the late 1980s, which would pressure that country’s government—in which the black majority at that time had no voice—to revise its racist employment practices.

Retired to Pursue Global Concerns

In 1982 Sullivan established the Phoenix-based International Foundation for Education and Self-Help, through which he examined methods of achieving social and political equity for blacks around the world. He envisioned a series of conferences where African and African-American leaders, working in unison, would take steps toward African self-reliance. In 1988, after 38 years at his pulpit—his congregation having grown from 500 to 6,000—Sullivan retired to Phoenix. Though he continued to preach occasionally at Zion, he focused most of his energies on more global concerns.

One of these was his organization of the first African and African-American Summit, which in April of 1991 addressed the lack of black American involvement in African affairs. Sullivan told Kenneth B. Noble in the New York Times, “Psychologically, we’ve been brainwashed to believe that Africa was the dark continent, a place of crocodiles, trees and Tarzan,” and as such, not worthy of mutual discourse.

African/African-American Summit

At the African and African-American Summit at Abidjan, Ivory Coast, Sullivan predicted that Africa was the economic future of the world. His plan to realize that projection included debt relief for African nations as well as aid from American blacks for the development of education, food production, and industrialization. Of his design to generate hundreds of African support committees similar to the Peace Corps, Sullivan disclosed to New York Times contributor Noble, “I envision the best and the brightest professionals giving a year… to work with Africa.”

Sullivan remains undaunted by obstacles to the future of his African ministry. “The economic progress we’ve seen in Asia in recent years is also possible in Africa,” Sullivan told Carolene Langie in Black Enterprise. “If in just 40 years, Asians and others can build factories, electronic devices and automobiles, with the proper tools, Africans can do the same.”