Everett Frederic Morrow (April 20, 1909 – July 19, 1994) was the first

African American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from an ...

to hold an executive position at the

White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest (Washington, D.C.), NW in Washington, D.C., it has served as the residence of every U.S. president ...

. He served President

Dwight Eisenhower Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (born David Dwight Eisenhower; October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was the 34th president of the United States, serving from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, he was Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionar ...

as Administrative Officer for Special Projects from 1955 to 1961.

Early life

Morrow was born in

Hackensack, New Jersey Hackensack is the most populous municipality in and the county seat of Bergen County, New Jersey, Bergen County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey.

. Morrow's father was John Eugene Morrow, a library custodian, who became an ordained Methodist minister in 1912, and his mother was Mary Ann Hayes, a former farm worker and maid. His grandparents had been enslaved. He graduated from

Hackensack High School Hackensack High School is a four-year comprehensive public high school located in Hackensack, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, operating as part of the Hackensack Public Schools. Hackensack High School serves students from the Bergen County, ...

in 1925, where he participated for three years on the school's debate team, serving as its president during his senior year."Morrow, Everett Frederic (1909–1994)"

BlackPast.org BlackPast.org is a web-based reference center that is dedicated primarily to the understanding of African-American history and Afro-Caribbean history and the history of people of Sub-Saharan African ancestry. In 2011, the American Library Associ ...

. Accessed November 25, 2017. "Everett Frederic Morrow, the son of John Eugene Morrow, a library custodian who became an ordained Methodist minister in 1912 and Mary Ann Hayes, a former farm worker and maid, was born on April 9, 1909 in Hackensack, New Jersey. He graduated from Hackensack High School in 1925, where he not only served on the debate team for three years, but was their president his senior year." He was a member of

Alpha Phi Alpha Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. () is the oldest intercollegiate List of African-American fraternities, historically African American Fraternities and sororities, fraternity. It was initially a literary and social studies club organized in the ...

fraternity. His brother, John H. Morrow, was Ambassador to

Guinea Guinea, officially the Republic of Guinea, is a coastal country in West Africa. It borders the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Guinea-Bissau to the northwest, Senegal to the north, Mali to the northeast, Côte d'Ivoire to the southeast, and Sier ...

and American representative to

UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO ) is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) with the aim of promoting world peace and International secur ...

Education

A graduate of the law school of

Rutgers University Rutgers University ( ), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of three campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's C ...

, he attended

Bowdoin College Bowdoin College ( ) is a Private college, private liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Brunswick, Maine. It was chartered in 1794. The main Bowdoin campus is located near Casco Bay and the Androscoggin River. In a ...

from 1926 to 1930, where he was one of two African American students in attendance.Willcox, Isobel
"Hackensack Is Recalled As Hostile, Racist Town"
''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'', July 15, 1973. Accessed November 25, 2017. "After his four years at Hackensack High School, Mr. Morrow attended and was graduated from Bowdoin College, served as a major in the Army during World War II and earned a law degree at Rutgers University School of Law." Morrow had to return home before graduating to assist his family. (Bowdoin awarded him an honorary LL.D. degree in 1970.)

Early career

In 1935, Morrow held a position as a business manager for Opportunity Magazine, a part of the

National Urban League The National Urban League (NUL), formerly known as the National League on Urban Conditions Among Negroes, is a nonpartisan historic civil rights organization based in New York City that advocates on behalf of economic and social justice for Afri ...

. Two years later, he became a field secretary for the

NAACP The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is an American civil rights organization formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E. B. Du&nbs ...

, before joining the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the primary Land warfare, land service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution.Article II, section 2, clause 1 of th ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. In 1942, after only a month of serving in the US army as a private, he was promoted to sergeant. He soon after graduated from Officers Candidate School, and was discharged in 1946 as a Major of Artillery. Later, he was a writer for

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS (an abbreviation of its original name, Columbia Broadcasting System), is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainme ...

Political activity and White House period

After serving on Eisenhower's 1952 campaign staff, Morrow served as an adviser at the U.S. Commerce Department. He then moved to the White House as Administrative Officer for Special Projects, becoming the first African American to hold an executive position in the White House. The White House Historical Association wrote of his tenure:

As the sole African American on a staff dealing with racial tensions related to integration, Morrow faced difficult personal and professional struggles at the White House. The Supreme Court's landmark ''
Brown v. Board of Education ''Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka'', 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the ...
'' ruling, the Montgomery bus boycott, and the Little Rock crisis were the backdrop for Morrow's White House years. On a staff with a civil-rights policy that was at best cautious, Morrow was often frustrated and angered. He lived at a time when qualified African Americans were excluded from high-level political positions. Morrow as a black 'first' found relations within the president's 'official family' to be 'correct in conduct, but cold.'

Morrow campaigned for

Richard Nixon Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 until Resignation of Richard Nixon, his resignation in 1974. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican ...

in Nixon's unsuccessful 1960 presidential campaign, including a prime-time speech at the

Republican National Convention The Republican National Convention (RNC) is a series of presidential nominating conventions held every four years since 1856 by the Republican Party in the United States. They are administered by the Republican National Committee. The goal o ...

and a role in the Vice-Presidential selection caucus.

Post-White House life

In 1964, Morrow became the first African American vice-president of

Bank of America The Bank of America Corporation (Bank of America) (often abbreviated BofA or BoA) is an American multinational investment banking, investment bank and financial services holding company headquartered at the Bank of America Corporate Center in ...

, retiring from the company in 1975. He died on July 19, 1994, at the Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan.

Books and papers

After the 1960 campaign, Morrow wrote a book on his experiences, ''Black Man in the White House''. In it, Morrow said:

I have discovered certain peculiarities in the White House top staff. There is little sentiment at anyone's downfall. There may be outward expressions of sympathy, but each man is primarily concerned with his own survival, and there's always the possibility that another's misfortune will ease the pressure on him.

In Morrow's book, he speaks of many accounts where he suffered from racism on personal and professional levels. He also refers to multiple occasions when he was mistaken for a coat boy or taxi driver while working. In 1973, Morrow published his first autobiography, ''Way Down South Up North'', focusing on racism "up north", in his hometown of Hackensack, New Jersey. In 1980, after retiring from Bank of America, Morrow published his last autobiography, ''Forty Years a Guinea Pig: A Black Man's View from the Top.'' Some of his papers are at the Eisenhower Presidential Library, the Chicago Public Library's Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature, and the

Amistad Research Center The Amistad Research Center (ARC) is an independent archives and manuscripts repository in the United States that specializes in the history of African Americans and ethnic minorities. It is one of the first institutions of its kind in the United ...

in New Orleans, LA.