Lawrence Douglas Wilder

by Charles McGuigan 02.1995

GOVERNOR LAWRENCE DOUGLAS WILDER, former chief executive of Virginia,, embraces obstacles and encumbrances, every challenge he encounters, as opportunities to live life fully.

He’s just finished his radio talk show at WRVA and now is ready to talk about himself and his accomplishments. The talk show, a welcome relief from the likes of Rush Limbaugh, has become an almost instant success. It’s thoughtful, witty, sometimes sardonic, always informative. Wilder’s currently negotiating to go statewide with the show and in time the program will probably be carried nationally.

Wilder sits comfortably on the couch in the living room of his home on Hawthorne Avenue here in Richmond’s North Side. He wears a sweater made up of great Mondrian swaths of color, the predominant color being purple. His hair is white as a cloud. Wilder drapes his arms over the back of the couch, folds his legs, and when he does this his pants ride up along his calves exposing knee-high black boots emblazoned with the great seal of the Commonwealth of Virginia in gold.

This living room is part library, part conservatory and liberally sprinkled with objects from Wilder’s career and life as attorney, statesman, scholar and world traveler. There’s a picture of Nelson Mandela on an étagère, which also houses a host of clocks, all ticking away the minutes of this singular Richmonder’s life. Below the two shelves that hold the eight clocks, there’s a beautiful piece of African statuary, twin figures seated on thrones, king and queen perhaps, created by the Bobo tribe in brass using the lost wax art. There’s a solid brass telescope standing on its mahogany tripod, the wide lens pointed toward the window that overlooks the backyard. And flanking the window, floor-to-ceiling bookcases containing the classics of literature as well as books written by many of the greatest political thinker of all time, including a great many works by Civil Rights leaders about the Civil Rights movement.

Among a smattering of large scarabs carved from soap stone and onyx that crowd the mantelpiece, is a small sculpture cast in brass and set on a piece of marble. The rough hewn block of marble represents a mountain and at its top is a tall brass figure - Goliath. Scaling the side of the crag is a diminutive figure full of energy and rage, with a stone in the sling trailing behind him. It’s David about to fell the giant.

In some ways that’s exactly what Wilder was as a young man returning from Korea to his native Richmond where a giant called Intolerance, Racism, Segregation was about to be felled by a Supreme Court decision and, in part, through the courage and persistence of one young man who was destined to become the nation’s first governor of African heritage.

“The year after I returned, Brown versus the Board of Education was tried and it instilled in me a hope I had lost. The atmosphere of Richmond in the 1950s was not very good,” Wilder remembers. “Richmond was like two cities back then, a white one and a black one. Nothing was joint. Movies. Places of education. Golf links were closed to us.”

But Wilder would have a hand in changing all that, first as an attorney and later as a state senator, lieutenant governor, and finally as the governor of Virginia. “I became one of the lawyers who helped bring about change,” he says.

At the time of the Korean War, Wilder had just completed a bachelor of science degree in chemistry at Virginia Union University. While serving in the U.S. Army, Wilder received the Bronze Star for heroism in ground combat. He had rescued fellow soldiers and captured enemy troops. He was a hero, yet when he returned to his country he was treated as a second-class citizen.

He had done his duty, but he had also been changed utterly.

“I was very much a mild young man prior to the war,” says Wilder. “I wanted existence. To date women, drive a  car, buy a home. To live, you see, just to live. But the war hardened me. I mean, when they teach you how to kill, it hardens you.”

Being taught the art of killing wasn’t the only thing that hardened the young Wilder and crystallized his thinking.

“For one thing,” says Wilder, “there were great upheavals occurring all around the world. Problems in Kenya. Klan killing in the South. Nehru in India. Sukarno in Indonesia.” This litany of human travail trails off and Wilder is silent.

His dark eyes - penetrating, clear - consider a gold-leafed Ashanti chair, something that looks like it might have spilled out of the tomb of Tutankhamen. “But what about us, I wondered. What about me?” He pauses, shakes his head and his index finger scratches his temple. “When I was in Korea, I saw these Koreans, there were plenty of them, they weren’t fighting and there I was laying my life on the line and they were sitting out the war. And I thought, these men who I am defending could come back to my homeland with me and they would have more rights than I would have as an American citizen.”

At that moment of realization, Wilder was changed for good and all. Upon returning to the States, Wilder took a job for a couple of years at the state department of health working in their toxicology department. He found the work interesting, but not immensely satisfying. He had other plans, bigger fish to fry.

“I did not decide on studying law for the money,” Wilder recalls. “I decided on the law because I figured this was one way I could really effect change. And I did.”

But Wilder would not attend law school in his native state: men and women of African descent could not attend Virginia law schools in those days. It was but another stone in the defiant wall of Massive Resistance, one more way of preventing blacks from securing any real power.

So Wilder, bound and determined, headed North and entered the school of law at Howard University in Washington. He graduated in 1959, passed the bar, founded a law firm and eventually developed a reputation as a top notch criminal trial lawyer.

In 1969, Wilder entered politics. He ran for a state Senate seat in Richmond and became the first state senator of African heritage in Virginia since Reconstruction. It was one of many firsts in his political career.

Wilder reflects on his own first and middle names. “I was named after Frederick Douglass and Paul Lawrence Dunbar, the great poet,” says the former governor. He is still inspired today by the writing of these men. “They were great voices in our history and well worth remembering and rereading.”

Wilder’s mother, Beulah Richards, a Charles City native who was raised in New Jersey, was responsible for naming her youngest son. “She finished high school and lived most of her young life in New Jersey,” Wilder recalls. “She was educated in Northern schools and had been exposed to integration and she told us all these things are possible.” But in Richmond things were different. No schools were integrated and wouldn’t be for many years to come.

Regardless, Wilder persevered. While attending VUU, Wilder worked at exclusionary places like the now defunct John Marshall Hotel and the Commonwealth Club. Fellow classmates worked by his side. While most of these young men just did their work, Wilder extended his antenna to pick up bits of information and political chitchat that would help him in his future career. 

“I used to wait tables, but at that time we were virtually invisible,” says Wilder. “We were just servers and so these men, who were part of the state’s power structure, talked freely. They would extol the virtues of states rights, yet we knew that states rights was just another way of validating and protecting the institutions of segregation.” He smiles when he says this. “I just listened. They didn’t even know I was there, all I did was serve, but I was listening.”

Listening has always been a key ingredient to Wilder’s success. “If you listen to the people, you can learn” he says. “That’s part of the format of the radio show. I want the show to be a public forum where I can learn and where the callers and listeners can learn.”

Some of the most important words Wilder ever listened to came from his father, Robert J. Wilder, Sr., who worked for many years at the Southern Aid Life Insurance Company once located at Third and Leigh Streets. It was the oldest insurance company owned by Americans of African descent in the country.

“My father used to say, ‘I’m going to live until I die’,” Wilder remembers. ”I never understood what that meant, not when I was a child or a young man. But today I do. What he was saying was that you should enjoy your life fully. Actually live your life until your time has come. Do things, don’t just take up space.” The phone rings, a wrong number, and then he continues. “You see, what my father was getting at was this: challenges, no matter what they are, provide opportunities for us to live. That’s a good part of what life is really about.”

The men Wilder most admires are those who met the challenges of life. “Emerson’s writings appeal to me because he touched on what living means and because he was challenged by his society. And also because he became an exceptional wordsmith.”

The former governor also greatly admires Abraham Lincoln. “He was a remarkable man, living in remarkable times,” says Wilder. “He was poor and he learned the value of words and expressions. And though he was not a very skilled orator, he wrote with exceeding eloquence.”

The comparison between Lincoln and another early American leader, a Virginian, in fact, is inevitable. “Thomas Jefferson was no great orator either, but he wrote - this one man wrote - the Declaration of Independence.” Wilder pauses at the enormity of this document. “I admire that about him and I agree with him on the value of a sound education and believe as he believed that the least government is the best government.” Wilder clasps his hands, then folds his arms. “But there remains the fact that Jefferson owned other human beings. He talks of the rights of man and I believe in the rights of man, but I believe in the rights of all men. Jefferson was finally a tortured individual, but many of the things he left behind are worth studying.”

Wilder also admires some of the principles embraced by yet another son of Virginia. “Robert E. Lee is a man I have come to appreciate,” says Wilder. “He was a complex man and in his heart did not believe in slavery. He was a soldier first and foremost and he felt compelled to leave the Union and defend his state. It must have been a very difficult decision for him to make. You know, on the eve of the war, Lincoln wanted him to command the Union’s forces. Lee, of course, declined.”

These are among Wilder’s remarkable traits: He is able to examine history in its purest form and is then able to extract from it what is most important. Regardless of another’s beliefs, Wilder is fully in favor of freedom of expression. “Every year the Daughters of the Confederacy go to the Capitol and have a ceremony there and lay a wreath at Lee’s statue and I have always respected their right to revere who they want to revere,” says Wilder.

It’s only when a symbol, such as the Stars and Bars, is employed in such a way as to be offensive to other groups that Wilder takes issue. “A neighbor of mine had two or three Confederate flags, but he was one of these Civil War buffs. He didn’t admire slavery and I understood that,” Wilder says. But in the case of the Confederate flag adorning military patches of the Virginia National Guard, Wilder dug his heels in. “I concluded that such symbols which anger many of our citizens should not be officially sanctioned by the state.” The symbols were finally removed. “We cannot dwell in the past. That’s one of the reasons I believe that reparations to descendants of slaves is not going to happen. And, I truly believe that people don’t want to be paid for the past, all they want is a road free of obstacles in the present and future.”

Although Wilder does not advocate the current welfare system, he believes that minorities that have been oppressed need an additional edge in some cases “Welfare shouldn’t be permanent. In the words of FDR it should be a measure of relief, nothing more.” His finger strays to his temple. “But look at it this  way. Two men are running in a race. They compete each year and one of these men has his legs tied and try as he will there is no way he is ever going to win that race. Finally, years and years later, his legs are untied and the race continues. But he still can’t keep up. Why? Because the muscles have atrophied. What this man needs is periodic leg massages to restore those muscles. And that’s what we sometimes must do. We must massage those leg muscles that have been bound for so long a time, so these people can run and compete on an equal level.”

Lawrence Douglas Wilder was one of ten children. He grew up in a house at the corner of 28th and P Streets on Church Hill. That house has since been torn down, although back in the 1970s some thought it might be a good idea to preserve it, anticipating Wilder’s success. “But Henry Marsh and other members of city council opted not to preserve it,” says Wilder. “Subsequently, Walter Kinney said to me that it should have been saved. I don’t know. In any case that house is gone.”

It was in that house that his parents, who were both employed even through the lean years of the Great Depression, raised six daughters and two sons. “The oldest child, a girl, died at three years old; a son died as an infant,” says Wilder. “But that’s the way things were back then. It wasn’t uncommon to lose a young child and people back then generally had large families As a matter of fact, an only child was unusual.”

Wilder’s mother had been an only child. “She was a wonderful, giving woman,” Wilder remembers. “It was my father who was the disciplinarian. He implemented it. My father did not display affection, but my mother more than made up for it.” She particularly doted on Wilder. “I was her youngest son.” 

Her youngest son is now a man with a national reputation. He know presidents and senators, converses with them on the telephone. “I talked to Bill Clinton shortly before Christmas and gave him some unsolicited advice,” says Wilder. “I told him that he has to continue to improve upon who he has working for him. Discuss with them what you have to do. Then do it because it is right, not because it is popular.”

Wilder is somewhat disappointed with Clinton’s tenure as president. “I would have thought he would have been more practical. He had no mandate to change. The voters were showing disgust with the Bush administration. What he needed to do was really reform welfare. That should have been his top priority and by so doing he would have reformed, in part at least, health care. And when he began addressing health care reform he should have addressed tort liability, punitive awards and malpractice. Clamping down on the delivery of service, looking at Medicare to see if it needs reform.”

The former governor frowns and shakes his head. “Clinton should not have made gays in the military his defining moment. That put him head to head with the military and the chief executive should never put himself in this situation if possible. What he should have done was simply sign an executive order. Remember, the Army I fought with was fully integrated and it was integrated because of President Truman’s signing an executive order to that effect. Truman turned out to be someone that many would do well to emulate.”

The converse of this former president in Wilder’s opinion is Ollie North. Wilder dropped out of the recent senatorial election so that North would not be elected. “I had concluded that winning was more improbable than probable. I had also concluded that it was going to be pretty difficult for Robb or myself not to go down. And that would have meant the election of Oliver North.”

He is firm about his distrust of North. “I never wanted to be known as the reason that Oliver North became one of Virginia’s U.S. senators. By the time I made all of these decisions Robb had become an irrelevancy to me. I cared for what was and is in the best interest of Virginia. Had I stayed in I would have literally taken votes from Robb and that might have made North a serious contender.”

Wilder is worried that the state Democratic Party has lost its path. “It’s one thing to be anti-Allen, but what are we as Democrats for? I hate to say this, but it seems to me the party in Virginia has no plan for action.” He briefly comments on Allen. “It’s unfortunate that Allen has destroyed the one thing he had going for him - the nice, ‘clean-cut’ and I put this in quotes, ‘aw shucks’ good guy.” Wilder, himself a fiscal conservative who was responsible for trimming state spending during his tenure, thinks Allen might have gone too far.

But not all is grim in the political arena. Take for instance Wilder’s next door neighbor, City Councilwoman Viola Baskerville, who represents the Third District.

“I really like her. She’s down-to-earth, practical, and I predict a bright future for her. She’s the kind of person you want to see in office.” Baskerville is also the sort of politician who just might be able to heal some of the city’s old wounds. “She does so much to bridge the gap between young and old, poor and rich, black and white. And that’s what Richmond needs.”

The metro area also  needs to bridge the gaps between municipalities, according to Wilder. “In the absence of regional cooperation, this city will not be able to survive,” he says. “Virginia is the only state that still has independent cities and in the past there was less need for cooperation. But today that cooperation is essential for survival. We see people leaving the city and moving to counties because taxes are lower and schools are better. If we’re not careful, Richmond could become a place of minorities, the elderly and the poor. And that is not a city. A city is made up of all people from all walks of life.”

He mentions a man who only that day had spoken to Wilder on the radio talk show. “ ‘If we had a superintendent of the schools for the region and he demanded principals, who in turn demanded teachers, who in turn demanded students, that certain behavior is unacceptable, we would not have the problems we now face.’ This is what the caller had said. And I believe that we have to start at the top with direction. Teachers must be able to tell parents of students who have abused the schools that their children may not return to that school. We need schools where these troublemakers can go, if they want an education. What we can’t afford is a system that permits one rotten apple to spoil the barrel. Education is absolutely important and we as Americans, Virginians, Richmonders, must realize this.”

Richmond, Wilder’s home for 64 years, must finally come to terms with its diversity. No one can be excluded. Everyone must partake. “There are no orchestrated choruses today in Richmond,” says Wilder, frowning. “Once we start singing from the same hymn book, things will improve. And though no single entity should be charged with responsibility, we can’t afford to stand still. We must meet the challenges, we need to live until we die.”