Page 89 - Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows

THE LESSONS

additional 50,000 African-American employees for a total of 110,000. He
also helped raise their average pay level by 40 percent.
Once that issue was settled, Lee discovered yet another unfair practice:
The postal service was not depositing any of its $25 million daily postal
revenue into any of the twenty-one African-American-owned banks in the
country. “I told Larry that we put all that money into the Treasury and it
goes into Federal Reserve Banks and things of that nature, but there are
all these black banks in the United States,” Lee said. “Why don’t we put
some of our deposits into those that are just getting started? We’re making
other people very, very wealthy—why not spread it around?” O’Brien gave
the green light for that idea too, and suddenly the playing field became a
little more level for American minorities.
Since 1965, the White House Fellows have done exactly what President
Johnson and John Gardner had hoped they would do through their
Fellowships. They have brought the fresh ideas of a younger generation to
the nation’s capital, and they have worked with their principals to change
the status quo and root out discrimination wherever they found it. Their
collective efforts over the years undoubtedly have played a part in making
life better for people both inside and outside of Washington, and one hopes
that fewer Americans have experienced discrimination because of their
dedication to fairness and inclusion.
Great leaders recognize that talent and leadership abilities are distributed
randomly. Therefore, they do not form judgments about a person that are
based on ethnicity, gender, religion, age, or any other factor. They root out
prejudice in themselves and others and ensure that there is an equal oppor-
tunity at all levels for everyone to rise to a position of leadership in his or
her organization on the basis of merit and character.

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