How Doug Wilder Changed America

If one spends two seconds with Doug Wilder, something becomes strikingly clear: The 78-year-old former governor is not a lion in winter; the man is still a lion. It may be 20 years since Virginians made him the first African-American elected governor of an American state, but the gifts God gave Wilder have not faded into the history books.

Wilder can employ the quick mind, the flowing charm, and the high-wattage smile with only the slightest of facial movements. If he wants someone to like him, he knows how to make it impossible for that audience to do anything less than love him.

Simply put, it's easy to understand why Wilder stands as the first.

The Louisiana Constitution elevated Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback to that state's governorship in the early 1870s for about 30 days after his predecessor was impeached. That makes him the first man of African descent to assume the office of governor in the United States -- but more than anything Pinchback is an accident of history most books have forgotten.

Once Wilder starts to tell his story it becomes obvious that his raft of firsts -- first black man elected to the Virginia Senate since Reconstruction, first black man to head a Senate committee, first black man elected to statewide office in the commonwealth, and first elected black governor -- did not happen by mistake or fortuity. It would be hard to find someone who can identify an opportunity and pounce on it with greater skill and panache than Wilder.

His climb to the top of Virginia's governmental flow chart in 1989 began not in 1969 when he was first elected to the Virginia Senate. It had its roots in the 1965-1967 election cycles, when Wilder watched Dr. William Ferguson Reid first lose a race for the House of Delegates (1965) then win a seat two years later -- making Reid the first black man elected to the Virginia General Assembly since Reconstruction.

Wilder, a young lawyer of growing reputation, looked at the returns from those races and thought he saw something. He then turned his attention to J. Sargent Reynolds' winning 1967 race for a seat in the Virginia Senate. A moderate, white Democrat at a time when the Virginia party was just starting to slough off its segregationist past, Reynolds won his seat with an outpouring of support from black voters.

That wave of black votes mainly was motivated to help a black man, Bill Thornton, win a seat in the Virginia Senate -- but Reynolds became the ultimate beneficiary at a time when Virginia elected legislators in multi-member districts. The Richmond Crusade for Voters, a powerful force for black political action in Central Virginia, had endorsed both Thornton and Reynolds. Wilder realized that if a black candidate could get on the ballot one-on-one with a white candidate, a black candidate could win.

Once Wilder finished his own quiet post-Election-Day analysis, he says he decided, "If Sarge runs [for lieutenant governor in 1969], I will run for his Senate seat." Reynolds was Virginia's answer to Massachusetts' rich, charming, and handsome Jack Kennedy. Reynolds, who tragically died of a brain tumor in 1971, also exhibited Kennedy's famous habit of refusing to wait his turn. After only four years in elected office Reynolds was making obvious moves toward a 1969 statewide campaign for Virginia's No. 2 office, so Wilder quietly began his own improbable climb up the political ladder.

"I wasn't going wait for Sarge to win [another office]." Wilder couldn't wait, because he didn't at first appear to be the logical candidate to succeed Reynolds. Thornton had almost won in 1967 -- and Wilder wasn't identified as part of the city's civil rights elite. What Wilder had was a lot of friends, the ability to make friends, and smarts. His standing in the black community loomed large because he was the first lawyer to open a practice in Richmond's Church Hill neighborhood.

"They told me I was crazy. I'd be the only one there. That was why I knew it was the place for me," Wilder says, laughing, as he recalls the decision. If someone in Church Hill needed a lawyer, he went to Wilder. And many did over the years. Wilder used those contacts to build a grassroots base that he seamlessly transferred to his political ambitions. He wasn't known as a civil rights orga nizer during those years, but he had made himself known -- to everyone. His ability as a successful trial lawyer made the task easier.

Wilder went to see Thornton, and told the defeated 1967 Senate candidate that he, as the newcomer, would defer to Thornton. Unhappy with the result of the 1967 campaign, Thornton said that was not necessary because he was not going to run if Reynolds vacated the seat. Black power brokers in town wanted Thornton or some other civil rights figure, but when Reynolds won the office of lieutenant governor in November 1969 every other black candidate was starting years behind Church Hill's lawyer, L. Douglas Wilder. And with only a few weeks to go before a planned special election, it was too late to stop Wilder.

Historical lore has it that Wilder benefited during that special election because his two white opponents split the white vote. That's not true. Wilder won more than his two opponents, a former mayor of Richmond and the retiring lieutenant governor, combined. The young lawyer demonstrated an uncanny ability to dance his way around potentially sensitive political issues. Forty years later Wilder reveals that "Reynolds helped behind the scenes," which added credibility to Wilder's efforts to attract white votes to combine with his grassroots support in the black community. Mr. Wilder was on his way to Capitol Square.

"I was a babe in the woods as it related to the mechanics of legislative process," Wilder says today. That didn't last long, as he quickly began to amass power in the Virginia Senate's clubby atmosphere. It was there that his easy ability to make friends and scare adversaries served him well.

Eventually the former long-shot Senate candidate gained acclaim as one the General Assembly's most effective legislators. Wilder rose to the chairmanship first of the Senate Rehabilitation and Social Services Committee, next to the leadership of the Transportation Committee, and then to the helm of the Senate's Privileges and Elections Committee. Equally as important, his colleagues elected him to lead the Democratic Steering Committee -- "the committee that appoints senators to serve on committees," Wilder explains. That made many senators feel they were indebted to the gentleman from the City of Richmond.

Even today, the powerful Senate Finance Committee's chairman, Charles Colgan, sits in his current perch because Wilder assigned him to the committee many years ago.

As for the mechanics of the political process, Wilder was never a babe in the woods -- he was a natural. Almost as soon as he solidified his hold on his seat in the Virginia Senate -- which didn't take long -- Wilder began to organize Virginia's Black Caucus. Not limited only to black members of the General Assembly, Wilder's Black Caucus "included state and local officials from everywhere" around the commonwealth.

He organized them so they knew one another, helped one another, and gathered power together that they could not exercise individually. They helped Robb win his first race for lieutenant governor in 1977 after some in the black community hedged support, and Wilder's Black Caucus did the same thing four years later when it successfully helped motivate black support for Robb's 1981 campaign for governor. As the conservative voters began to feel more comfortable with the GOP, the black votes Wilder so masterfully was organizing became all the more crucial for Democratic candidates -- and so did Sen. Wilder.

It was during Robb's 1981 gubernatorial race that Wilder began to think he should "move up or out," because he felt he had "done everything he could in the State Senate." Wilder analyzed the multi-racial coalition Robb had assembled in 1981, and thought it might present an opportunity for a black candidate to run and win statewide.

But fate intervened when Sen. Harry Byrd Jr., a former Democrat turned independent, retired in 1982. Democrats around the commonwealth -- led by Gov. Robb -- coalesced around Virginia Beach Del. Owen Pickett as the Democratic candidate to replace Byrd in Washington. But Pickett made a fatal mistake during his announcement speech: He offered praising for Sen. Harry Byrd Sr., the architect of the segregationist Massive Resistance movement in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

The members of the Black Caucus wanted a "final nail" hammered into the casket of segregationist old Virginia, so its members decided someone had to run against Pickett. That someone was Wilder, the caucus' most prominent member. Twenty-seven years later Wilder admits, "I knew I couldn't win the race against Pickett, but we had to show people Virginia wasn't going that way -- [the Massive Resistance way] -- anymore."

Because of the work Wilder and the Black Caucus had done to elect Robb in 1977 and the entire Democratic ticket in 1981, everyone knew that (1) Wilder could inflict serious damage if he ran and (2) that he might actually do it. Pickett eventually withdrew from the race, and Wilder's profile as one of Virginia's most powerful Democrats was published far and wide for the commonwealth to see.

Wilder next set his sights on the 1985 Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor, with the full backing of his statewide Black Caucus -- which was growing exponentially in the 1980s as black leaders were elected around the state using the grassroots support of Wilder and the caucus. Few regular Democrats wanted Wilder on the ticket.

University of Virginia Center for Politics Director Larry Sabato remembers, ""When Doug Wilder said he was going to run for lieutenant governor, my telephone rang off the hook. Very senior Democratic officeholders were apoplectic, and almost unanimously they said Wilder couldn't win and would take the ticket down with him. Of course, most of the officeholders wouldn't say this publicly, because Democrats didn't have a prayer without the African-American vote in November."

Democratic poobahs may have wanted to get rid of Wilder, but they knew that wasn't an option. Other candidates tried quietly to oppose Wilder, but they couldn't pick up traction. These putative candidates quickly discovered winning the nomination would be a hollow victory, because without the black votes of Wilder's Black Caucus, another candidate couldn't win in November. Sabato points out, "The panic was misplaced and everyone was dead wrong."

Wilder claimed the 1985 Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor, and went on to run what political commentator Robert Holsworth calls a "conceptually brilliant" race that consisted of an "initial tour through southwest" and "running [a] bare-bones campaign and saving the dollars for television" It worked brilliantly. Holsworth says of the election, " In 1949, V.O. Key called Virginia a 'political museum piece.' Wilder's victory showed that Virginia had not only entered the contemporary world, but in one crucially important way was leading it."

In many ways, the 1989 election was far more important than the one in 1985 -- but it was also an echo of the previous campaign.

The obvious Democrat to challenge Wilder, Attorney General Mary Sue Terry, realized that winning the nomination by defeating the black lieutenant governor would be hollow, so she deferred. Wilder then pulled out his conceptually brilliant script from 1985 and watched it replay itself.

Sabato recalls that "1989 was the real thing. For Virginia, even by a tiny margin, to become the first American state to elect a black governor was electric. Never has a state election drawn so many international news organizations. It was headline news around the world that a state so identified with the old Confederacy had broken this key barrier."

Even Republicans couldn't help but marvel at what Wilder and his fellow Virginians had accomplished. Of that time, Republican George Allen -- the man who followed Wilder in Virginia's Executive Mansion and a student of Virginia history -- recalls: "Doug Wilder is the grandson of slaves, and ever since Africans first arrived in servitude at Jamestown, our nation has been struggling to overcome its legacy of racial discrimination and fulfill the promise of the Declaration of Independence . . . for citizens of all races and backgrounds. Doug Wilder's 1989 breakthrough was a key moment . . . in fulfilling that historic promise."

The "Douglas" in Lawrence Douglas Wilder comes from Wilder's parents' admiration of black abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Douglass once said, "Power concedes nothing without a demand." There are no more fitting words to describe the life of his namesake, Virginia's Great Iconoclast.

Cordel Faulk is a former Times-Dispatch Commentary editor. Contact him at .