He was the first Black person to be featured in the Forbes 400 List of Richest Americans in 1992.
He dined with the Big Boys, being part of the upstart tong of leveraged buyout artists mostly financed by the Mike Milken and his Beverly Hills-based team from Drexel Burnham Lambert.
His TLC Beatrice International was also the first Black majority-owned firm to report greater than $1 billion US in annual sales.
And he always seemed to be having fun, as noted by his sartorial elegance, and present cigars.
Sadly, he passed away from brain cancer at the tender age of 50 back in 1993.
I looked up to the man back then, and I still do, as his accomplishments remain relevant, twenty-three years after his demise.
His book, Why Should White Guys Have All The Fun, is a treasured tome.
Today’s Blaxploitation Movie is Uptown Saturday Night (1974), starring Sidney Poitier, Calvin Lockhart, Johnny Sekka, Rosalind Cash, Harry Belafonte, Flip Wilson, Richard Prior, and Paula Kelly.
© 2002 – 2016, John Obeto for Blackground Media Unlimited
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