You’ve seen it, I’ve seen it, the world has seen it – the unbelievable human suffering and death in New Orleans’ Convention Center-- the victims of Katrina swimming through murky waters, and others clinging to rooftops, awaiting rescue. Never will we forget those scenes, nor should we.

At the same time, millions of generous Americans, not waiting for the inert FEMA to act, began to send money, clothes, food, water, etc.to their fellow citizens.

FEMA has become a conundrum, but to many of us, the absence of any public appearance of the black elite is more than a conundrum, it is a disgrace, a betrayal to their race, to their humanity. Back in January 19th of 2003, I wrote about the invisible existence of the majority of the black upper class, revealed by Lawrence Otis Graham in his book, Our Kind of People.

Here, Graham forces us to contemplate how different would be our national social fabric today had the highly successful blacks and whites pooled their resources to contribute leadership, money and educational resources to bring hope, inspiration and help to all our people.

With such support, enlightened, dedicated mentors would have encouraged youngsters of every race to move beyond the world of rap music, degrading videos, basketball and football heroes, many of whom are addicted to foul language, drugs and violence, into a world where hard work and personal integrity are the hallmarks of success. Not only did the whites and blacks not work together toward that end, neither did the blacks work to serve their own.

Graham illustrates that fact in the person of his maternal great-grandmother, a light-complexioned, straight-haired, black Southern woman, who discouraged Graham and his brother from associating with dark-skinned children, and warned them that staying in the sun too long would deepen the color of their skin.

As a child in Memphis, Tennessee, Great-grandmother Porter had worn silk taffeta dresses, had studied the piano and was fluent in French. Her daughter followed in her footsteps. The family avoided the turmoil of the 60's by riding in a car, rather than buses, and using private schools, rather than segregated, substandard public schools.

Great-grandmother Porter said she didn’t think much of the civil rights movement: “I don’t see anything civil about a bunch of nappy-headed Negroes screaming and marching around in the streets.” However, Graham later learned that she and her church friends often gave money to the NAACP.

The writer describes two worlds for blacks:

There were children who belonged to “Jack and Jill” and summered in Sag Harbor, Highland Beach, or Oak Bluffs, Martha’s Vineyard; and there were those who didn’t. There were mothers who graduated from Spelman or Fisk, and joined AKA, the Deltas, the Links and the Girl Friends, and there were those who didn’t. There were those fathers who were dentists, lawyers, and physicians from Howard and who were Alphas, Kappas, or Omegas and members of the Comus, the Boule, or the Guardsmen, and there were those who didn’t. There were those who could look back two or three generations and point to relatives who owned insurance companies, newspapers, funeral homes, local banks, trucking companies, restaurants and catering firms, or farmland, and there were those who couldn’t.

Graham informs us that the Africans who arrived in Plymouth in 1619, courtesy of Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, British and American slave traders, came from different areas of Africa with unique languages, skills and cultural backgrounds. Many came from villages with advanced skills in crafting iron, gold and leather, silver and bronze into tools, artwork and housewares, and where they were weaving clothes, growing vegetables and fruits, practicing different religions, and establishing laws, banking mechanisms, and medical treatments.

Yet, the fifteen million men, women and children were all treated the same on the auction block, their cultural heritage stripped from them. Only the selling price mattered: $500 per man, $250 per woman or child.

On the southern plantations, the slaves were divided into two groups – outside laborers who worked in the fields harvesting rice or tobacco, cutting sugar cane, picking cotton or building roads, smelting iron, digging wells or laying bricks.

The second group labored in the master’s house: cooking, cleaning, washing, and generally helping out with the personal needs of the family. They were better housed, fed, and some were given a basic education that allowed them to serve the household in greater measure.

It was to the owner’s financial advantage to father children with the slaves, which resulted in mulatto offspring, who often received favored treatment, including eventual freedom and a piece of land. Together with college education offered by such groups as the American Missionary Association, an association of liberal whites who had founded elementary schools for blacks, and the Freemen’s Aid Society, established by the episcopal Methodist Church, the foundation for a black aristocracy was created.

The first self-made woman millionaire in the United States was Madam C. J. Walker, who began a business developing hair products and cosmetics in the late 1890's. She gave millions to help NAACP’s campaign against lynching.

One Chicago matron offered her views on that organization:

The organization did wonderful things for us in the South – and up here, too– and I’m happy to give to them because they help all of us but you just don’t find a whole lot of professional blacks socializing among the NAACP. We’ve got our own groups ... Why should I be socializing with some caseworker or mailman who goes to NAACP events? I’d have as much in common with them as a rich white person has with her gardener.

The separation between the elite and the common people can also be found in the choice of religions, says Graham. The black elite often join the High Episcopal church because of its formality and the fact that the well-to-do blacks with roots in the West Indies had historic ties with that church. Others join the Congregational Church because of its mission work in establishing secondary schools and colleges. Above all else, both churches were without a preponderance of black members.

Graham said he finds both pride and guilt among the black elite:

On one level there are those of us who understand our obligation to work toward equality for all and to use our success in order to assist those blacks who are less advantaged. But on another level, there are those of us who buy into the theories of superiority, and who feel embarrassed by our less accomplished black brethren. ... We’ve got some of the best-educated, most accomplished, and most talented people in the black community – but at the same time, we have some of the most hidebound and smug.”

In the light of Graham’s work, we probably shouldn’t have been too disappointed by the absence of the black elite’s assistance in Katrina’s wake, yet, many of us were, especially when considering how may of our saints of the past and the present have given their lives to serve, encourage and comfort poverty-stricken blacks.

Come, you black business people, on the list of Fortune Magazine’s The 50 Most Powerful Black Executives in America, stand up, assume leadership. Your people need you. We all need you. Young people are dreaming great dreams, and if not, why not?

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