Dennis Dowdell On Mentoring (Section 2)

How much influence did the Civil Rights movement have on your mentoring work today?

Oh, tremendous, I mean you have to appreciate it, in starting an Urban League Chapter, my dad would have Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Abernathy and somebody else sitting around a coffee table talking about how to integrate South Bend, Indiana, or Indianapolis, Indiana. I mean that's how I grew up. When he moved to Syracuse, New York to start the Urban League, nine African-Americans had graduated from high schools that year, and he said, "I need you to bring in the people that you know in corporate America." So, I brought in all my friends who were vice presidents in the private sector. And my dad then had a TV program and that's what I did for them.

Did you have a mentor? And if so, how did he influence you?

My father was the greatest person in the world to me. One day, I went home from college and my father told me that he'd applied for law school, but that there was a quota system at this institution and they only allowed five African-Americans in per year and they didn't allow him in. This is the real reason that I decided to go to law school.

Next >>