Authors: William D. Cohan
The next year, Cofield tried again to get hired at Goldman. The dearth of blacks and Hispanics in white-collar jobs—and specifically on
Wall Street—had been the subject of a series of hearings held by the
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission between January 15 and January 18, 1968, in New York City. On January 15, partner
George Doty testified before the commission on behalf of Goldman. In his opening statement, Doty explained that with the large increase in stock exchange trading volume, Wall Street firms, including Goldman, had been looking to hire more people, including by putting ads in the newspapers, talking to headhunters, and interviewing MBAs on college campuses. Nevertheless, he testified, “in the face of a very strong demand for qualified workers by ourselves and our competitors, the supply of Negroes or Spanish-Americans motivated to seek employment in our industry seems very small.” He said Goldman had not had much success hiring blacks at the firm, despite interviewing at seventy-five schools and being willing to consider the applications of people who wrote to the firm unsolicited. Doty said Goldman saw “only one Negro student” in seventy-five schools and that he had not been aware of a “single write-in from a Negro.”
On February 20, 1970, Cofield interviewed at Stanford with Jamison, who, according to Cofield, told him during the interview that his
application for employment could not move forward because “of the negative view held by a senior partner regarding blacks.” (In an interview, Cofield identified the partner as
Richard Menschel.) “Jamison said that this particular partner … did not want any Blacks in the corporate finance department,” according to a memo Cofield wrote on March 4 to a professor of finance at Stanford. “Thus he did not see how they could make me an offer.” When Cofield asked Jamison who was responsible for hiring, Jamison told him “they would like to have a consensus of the key people in the department favoring the hiring of an individual before an offer was made” and that Jamison had “indicated” during the February 20 interview that Menschel “had refused to talk to me” and “of course, Jamison indicated that he was very sorry—his day was spoiled because he had to tell me this—that this was a very bad situation, and hopefully things would change over time. He felt that since the people at City Bank were pleased with me, I had beautiful opportunities there.”
Cofield recalled “being stunned, really stunned when he dropped the bomb pretty early in our talk. I’d spoken to [Goldman] prior to that and I really thought I would be hired” because Jamison, without saying so, “sort of let on like I’d be hired. Like it sounds good and I’m really impressed by you.” After making the statement about the “senior partner,” Cofield said Jamison tried “to lessen the blow” by suggesting Goldman wasn’t the right place for him anyway and that he “had some good opportunities” at
First
National City Bank. When Goldman denied Cofield a job in the firm’s Corporate Finance Department, he asked for a job in another area of the firm but was also denied a chance to pursue that opportunity.
A day later, Jamison sent Cofield an Express Mail, handwritten, somewhat opaque note that he had written the day of the interview: “Your quiet reaction to our conversation this morning, I believe, belied your concern regarding it. I very honestly, but foolishly, allowed my frustrations to become yours. In fairness to the confidence of our conversation and what I have considered a valued personal relationship, I would hope that you would get in touch with me directly if your concern continues as mine does.” Jamison gave Cofield his home and work telephone numbers and said he could call collect “anytime.”
Cofield said that after the incident with Jamison, Goldman tried several times to offer him a job—doing what he was never sure—but he never thought the firm was serious about him or his career. “I really wanted to work in corporate finance,” he said. “And I thought I was close to a job with Goldman. Then Jamison shared that point of view with me and it was all over.” Cofield had grown up in Raleigh, North Carolina,
and his mother was one of the first blacks to serve on both the Wake County Board of Education and the Wake County Board of Commissioners. He said he knew what to expect when it came to discrimination. “But this really surprised me,” he said.
Cofield reported to his Stanford finance professor that he “place[d] no trust or confidence whatsoever in Jamison” and “if the situation were as Jamison described it on Friday he could override the bigot’s decision and offer me a position anyway. It appears as though the main hiring responsibility for the department lays [
sic
] with Jamison.”
The incident led to much consternation amond Cofield, Stanford, and Goldman. On February 27, Levy wrote to his friend
Arjay Miller, the dean of the business school and a former president of
Ford Motor Company. “I deeply regret that a misunderstanding has arisen regarding the employment practices at Goldman, Sachs & Co.,” he wrote. “As a director of the
New York Urban Coalition and one who has urged the employment of minorities both within my firm and the Stock Exchange community, it is embarrassing to feel the necessity of explaining our policies and outlining our performance in this regard.” Levy attached a chart showing that of the firm’s 1,505 employees as of May 1969, 201, or 13.4 percent, were blacks, women, “Oriental,” “American Indian”—one man—or “Spanish Sur-Named Employees.” He neglected to point out to Miller that there was only one black professional at Goldman and the other 94 blacks were clerical or janitorial employees.
On March 6,
Robert Rosenzweig, Stanford’s associate provost, met with Jamison—he referred to him as John “Jameson”—and H. Fred Krimendahl II, another Goldman partner and the head of the Buying Department, in New York, where he had been on other business. “I learned little that we did not already know,” he wrote in a March 9 memo but then summarized that “Jameson and company would like very much to deny that anything happened. All that stands in the way are the facts.” He said Goldman’s “chief worry” was that Cofield “will bring an action against them, presumably for violation of one or another of the fair employment statu[t]es. Because of this fear, no one from Goldman, Sachs will speak directly to Cofield on the grounds—no doubt sound in the view of what they have already said—that more words mean more trouble.” But this strategy “leaves them in a bind,” Rosenzweig wrote, of being “solely at the mercy of Mr. Cofield’s decision.” Goldman wanted Stanford to mediate. “More specifically,” Rosenzweig wrote, “they would like us to read Mr. Cofield’s mind and advise them as to the best among the following courses: 1. Do nothing, if Cofield plans to do nothing; 2. Offer to bring Cofield to New York for an interview—their normal course for an applicant
in whom they are interested, though they recognize that in this case it would be tantamount to offering him a job; 3. Just offer him a job.”
Rosenzweig would have none of it. “I said we would not mediate, but that we would, of course, report to Cofield on our discussions with Goldman, Sachs, including this one, so that he would have all the evidence before him to aid him in deciding on a course of action,” he wrote. In his memo to the file, Rosenzweig wrote that Stanford did not “want a fight with Goldman, Sachs or anyone else” and that if Cofield decided to “press the issue,” the university would “stand with him based on the facts as we know them, since we want least of all to be in a position of aiding or being blind to discrimination.” Rosenzweig sent a copy of the memo to Cofield, who later said in an affidavit that at this point Goldman “realized that they had blundered in rejecting me for racial reasons.”
On March 16, he replied to Rosenzweig in preparation for a meeting he was having with him and other university officials that day: “Goldman, Sachs’ discriminatory employment practices are symbolic of the injustices and discrimination Blacks have faced and continue to face. Although many Whites profess in their public life to denounce discrimination and urge equal treatment and opportunity for Blacks, their actions clearly indicate that they are racist.” Cofield wrote that he would welcome the opportunity to discuss with Levy “the elimination of Goldman, Sachs’ discriminatory employment practices” and invited him to Palo Alto “as soon after March 30th as possible.” Without that discussion, he wrote, “we” would have “no choice” but to decide among four choices: that there be “an immediate cessation of all recruiting activities” by Goldman at Stanford; that Cofield sue Goldman privately; that he sue Goldman through the Justice Department based on equal employment statutes; or that a “sanction and redress” be undertaken by the
New York Stock Exchange against Goldman.
During the meeting, Rosenzweig read Cofield’s memo over the phone to Krimendahl. Stanford also sent a copy of the memo to Goldman in New York. On April 6, Krimendahl wrote to Cofield that Goldman now believed “it would be fruitful to hold further discussions with you relating to employment with our firm.” Krimendahl offered Cofield an all-expense-paid trip to New York “at your earliest convenience” to “visit with members of our Buying Department as well as various partners of the firm.” Cofield did not respond to Krimendahl’s letter.
On April 27, Cofield filed a charge of discrimination against Goldman with the EEOC based on his February 20 interview with Jamison. He also filed a five-page affidavit that described what had transpired during the previous nine weeks. On June 10, Stanford’s general counsel sent
Jamison a letter—again misspelling his name—describing that Stanford’s president had asked that a study be conducted “to ensure that firms and companies which recruit here do not discriminate in hiring” and that in the “course of that study … the issues raised by Mr. Cofield will be considered fully.” He wrote that pending the outcome of the study Goldman would be barred from recruiting at Stanford, a ban that lasted five years. “There’s not much more that Stanford could have done,” Cofield said in a recent interview.
After graduating from Stanford, Cofield moved to Boston to take a job at
Arthur D. Little & Co., the management consultants. One day, he got a call from Dick Menschel, whom Jamison had cited as the partner who raised the objection to Cofield’s hiring, inviting him to dinner to talk “on a personal basis [about] what he thought were misunderstandings regarding Goldman Sachs.” On August 17, Cofield filed a complaint with the
New York State Division of Human Rights against Goldman, as well as, individually, Levy, Whitehead, Jamison, and Krimendahl, charging them with “unlawful discriminatory practice relating to employment by refusing to hire him because of his race and color.” On August 28, Menschel and Cofield dined together at Locke-Ober restaurant—one of the toniest in the city—and Menschel assured Cofield he was not prejudiced against blacks and that Jamison had gotten it wrong. “Goldman Sachs does not have discriminatory hiring practices,” Menschel told him. He also said he did not think Jamison was “a bigot” and that what Jamison said was not “a representation of his own views either.” But the discussion steered clear of the actual words Jamison had used in the February 20 interview. A day earlier, Goldman would later claim, it offered Cofield a job—“a definite job offer,” the firm said. Cofield denied any such offer had been made. On October 16, though, as part of “an investigatory conference” at the New York State Division of Human Rights, Goldman made “a definite offer of employment” to Cofield.
On December 16, 1970, the EEOC’s acting district director in New York “found reasonable cause to believe” that Cofield’s charges against Goldman were true and found “no concrete evidence to support Goldman’s claims that it had ‘actively recruited for executive personnel among minority groups as indicative of their commitment to the objective of providing equal employment opportunity to all qualified persons.’ ” There was an effort made at the end of December to settle the New York matter through a “proposed conciliation agreement” that included the agreement that Goldman would hire Cofield in Krimendahl’s department.
But on January 16, 1971, Cofield rejected the settlement because he claimed he was never offered a job. “It is the practice of most firms
to put an offer for employment in writing,” he wrote. “This they have not done.” He also objected to the settlement because there were no provisions in it to increase “the number of Black and other minority group employees in professional and executive positions.” On June 16, the EEOC gave Cofield permission to bring a civil suit against Goldman in U.S. district court and told him he had thirty days in which to do so. If he failed to file, he would lose his right to sue. On July 2, the EEOC as a whole adopted the finding of the New York district office in Cofield’s case and encouraged both Cofield and Goldman to “make proposals” on how to settle the matter. On March 6, 1972, Cofield and his lawyer,
Clarence Dilday, of
Owens & Dilday, in Boston, filed a suit against Goldman.
In the suit, which had the blessing of the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission and the
New York State Division of Human Rights, Cofield sought a finding that Goldman violated the law and would be enjoined from doing so again. He also sought $100,000 personally and another $1 million from Goldman on behalf of other plaintiffs—the suit was given class-action status—“who might suffer from the firm’s alleged discriminatory practices.” But Cofield had filed the suit too late. On September 12, 1972, the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York found no “just cause for the delay” and dismissed Cofield’s suit against Goldman.
Before the ruling against him in September, Cofield had taken the story to the
Wall Street Journal,
figuring he had missed the deadline and could not prevail.
James Gilmour, Goldman’s personnel manager, said the incident was a misunderstanding. “Somehow or other he felt we discriminated in our recruitment of college grads,” he told the paper. “We tried to tell him that wasn’t the reason and we’ve taken in blacks before.” Gilmour said Cofield had wanted a job involving “risk capital,” so the firm suggested he might have a better chance getting such a job somewhere else.
Cofield’s brother, a student at Wharton at around the same time that Cofield had graduated from Stanford, remembered being at a Goldman Sachs recruiting event with John Whitehead, then on Goldman’s
Management Committee, when another student, who happened to be black, asked Whitehead about the incident with James Cofield at Stanford. Whitehead, who was busy touting Goldman’s virtues to an eager audience, was left speechless by the question. In 1971, Goldman established the
Goldman Sachs Fellowships at
Harvard Business School, awarded annually to outstanding minority-group students.