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For the record, Hugh McColl was not there. Ed Crutchfield wasn't either, and neither, obviously, were the late Bill Lee or John Belk. No tycoons, no power brokers, no one who could pick up the phone and command millions was spotted that morning.
I was sitting in the Johnson C. Smith University student union last week for a breakfast discussion about a book the assembled people had just read – Paul Tough's “Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America.”
The talk was interesting, and I'll get to that. But just as intriguing was the feeling I had – that I was glimpsing the post-McColl-et-al future of leadership in Charlotte.
McColl, Bank of America's now-retired CEO, and retired First Union CEO Crutchfield were among a handful of men in Charlotte who had the money and command to make buildings sprout from the dirt, birth nonprofit institutions and generally ensure that things got done to his liking. Bill Lee was CEO of what was then Duke Power, and John Belk ran the Belk department store empire and was mayor 1969-1977.
But the old model of civic action – find a magnate to adopt you – just doesn't work any more. Wachovia (formerly First Union) was swallowed by Wells Fargo. BofA, like Duke Energy, is a global enterprise whose CEO's focus is beyond Charlotte.
That leaves Charlotte struggling to fathom who's going to lead, and how.
But back to the book. It describes the extraordinary agency that activist Geoffrey Canada built in New York's Harlem neighborhood, the nonprofit Harlem Children's Zone. His goal is to surround neighborhood children with services, starting with a “Baby College” (really for expectant parents) and moving through preschool and charter schools to ensure that the kids grow up healthy, well-educated, and college-bound. Canada calls it a “conveyor belt.”
Tough's book describes Canada's struggles to make a success of his charter schools. With a Harvard degree and years of civic activism, he could draw support from Wall Street's hyper-wealthy, notably billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller, who the Wall Street Journal reported has given “well north” of $100 million.
Kathy Ridge of the nonprofit Mecklenburg Citizens for Public Education organized the breakfast because, she said, she and other folks had read the book and been intrigued and challenged by it. Could Charlotte do something similar? If so, how would it look and who would do it?
“In our office, ‘Whatever It Takes' started quite a buzz,” said Brett Loftis, executive director of the Council for Children's Rights.
Besides Loftis, the crowd included Michael Marsicano, CEO of the Foundation for the Carolinas; Anne Udall of the Lee Institute; Department of Social Services director Mary Wilson and other DSS, nonprofit and education figures.
Many said Canada's approach was not revolutionary – it was stuff most people in their fields have known for years. The key was that he had the drive, the on-the-ground experience, the patient donors and, no small thing, million- and billionaires to fund his project.
Plenty of questions emerged: Can something like that happen here? Can the agencies and nonprofits already involved in fighting poverty figure out how to connect the dots? Is there a leader here who can be Charlotte's Geoffrey Canada? Do you even need that leader?
Friday, I asked Ridge what's been happening since the breakfast. She told me, “Some people say, ‘We need the billionaire. We need a Stanley Druckenmiller, and we can't do it without one.'”
But she mused about whether yearning for that billionaire might just be an excuse to avoid raising a hand to help tackle the very difficult problems of poverty and poor education.
After all, the people sitting around those tables last week were passionate, and they know the problems and they understand much of what's needed to solve them, even if they don't know who'll do it or how.
Maybe that's all it takes. Maybe they don't need to be adopted by a CEO (although, of course, $100 million would not be unwelcome).
Maybe the leaders were already in the room.
Mary Newsom is an associate editor at the Observer, mnewsom@charlotteobserver.com or P.O. Box 30308, Charlotte, NC 28230-0308.
