It was before 7 a.m. on a recent day when the middle-aged black woman arrived at the door of the fashionable health club`s aerobics class, only to be stopped by a horrified instructor: ”Ma`am, you can`t come in here. This class is for men only.”
The woman looked at the instructor, then considered her new leotards. She told him nicely, yet firmly: ”I`ve been coming here for a long time, and I set my alarm just to get down here at 7. I`m sorry, but I`m going to your class.”
She created a furor in the process, but the class is now ”integrated.”
It`s not surprising. For the woman was Jewel Stradford Lafontant, whose 30-year-plus business career has been built on conquering far more lofty bastions of both sex and race.
Now a partner in the Chicago law firm of Vedder, Price, Kaufman & Kammholz, Lafontant is as well known for her inroads as a highly regarded corporate director as she is for those on the legal front.
Cornelius and Aida Stradford`s second child and only daughter was reared as a son on Chicago`s South Side. She wore knickers until she reached high school and developed into ”worse than a tomboy,” she said. ”I was a bluffer and a fighter. People who saw me grow up never thought I would end up feminine.”
She believes her admiration for her father and grandfather–both Republicans, civil libertarians and lawyers–led her into law and cooling her hotheaded ways.
She expressed an early militancy by staging sit-ins at segregated restaurants in Chicago in the 1940s. In time, especially after the 1958 birth of her son (by her first husband), John Rogers Jr., she mellowed enough to work within the system.
Lafontant graduated from liberal Oberlin College–her father`s, grandfather`s and great-grandmother`s alma mater–and became the first black woman to graduate from the University of Chicago Law School. In 1955, she became the first black woman to become an assistant U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois.
From there, she went into private practice, specializing in criminal law and winning a landmark decision in her first case ever appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. In the early 1960s, she started a law firm with her late husband, Ernest Lafontant, and her father, and gravitated toward corporate law. In 1968, she was elected to the Jewel Foods Co. board of directors, becoming one of the country`s first women in such a position.
Lafontant, a prominent Republican, in 1973 jumped at the chance to move to Washington as one of three deputy solicitor generals, one of the top legal assignments in the country.
She is, according to Judge Seymour Simon, an example for lawyers generally as well as for women at the bar who aspire to success. ”And as far as her corporate board responsibilities, she is doing what every lawyer only hopes to do,” he added.
Lafontant has done it all and done it well. She has done it in a way that has won her the respect of many, but not without the early labeling by some as a ”token.”
She believes that it`s more productive to be nice than militantly aggressive. ”When you develop chips, you become an unlikeable person,” she reflected. ”It isn`t because you`re black that you`re not getting a job; it`s because you aren`t a nice person.”
The word ”token” irritates her. She said, a touch testily: ”I was the first black female to finish the University of Chicago Law School. They didn`t let me out because I was black. They almost didn`t let me in because I was black.”
However, she added: ”Now that things are changing, I think it is a mistake for us, especially women, to fall victim to this `token` idea. You can`t look into the hearts and minds of people when they present you with an opportunity. The thing to do is to recognize that opportunity and say thank you. Then it`s up to you to change that tokenism into something real.”
That`s exactly what most believe Lafontant has done.
Fellow Continental Illinois Corp. Director James Bere, chairman of Borg Warner Corp., reflected: ”What I admire most in people is consistency, and that`s something I can say about Jewel. Whether things are going well, or there are hardships of some kind going on, she always has been very consistent in her handling of situations.”
Scott Shelton, a senior partner of executive recruiting firm Spencer Stuart Associates, added: ”She is considered as a person with extremely good judgment and sensitivities. She is highly regarded and much sought after, but she is so loaded down with commitments now, it is difficult.”
Currently, Lafontant holds seven corporate directorships, among them Mobil Corp., Equitable Holding Corp. and Transworld Corp. She steps off the Continental board Monday after 10 years` service. It may emerge as one of the few blotches on her record, which rankles her.
Lafontant had been ready to resign her Continental post before 10 directors, Lafontant included, were asked to resign in December. She felt there was a conflict between her Continental and Equitable jobs, as the latter has branched into financial services, but she was asked to stay on by Continental`s present management to help smooth their transition.
None of the directors was thrilled at their firing. At the board meeting where the matter was discussed, Lafontant said, somewhat indignantly: ”But I don`t want to be fired.” From across the table, Bere prompted rueful laughter when he replied: ”Face it, Jewel, no matter how you try to envision this, we`ve all been fired.”
The little Lafontant says about Continental`s near-failure and the board`s perceived role shows her frustration over the common perception of a director`s responsibilities.
”The bank had an unusual situation in that, unlike other corporations, they have federal agency oversight between management and the board,”
Lafontant pointed out. ”(Regulators) come into the bank periodically and are supposed to go deep into it and dig, making recommendations which the board sees are carried out. Now, if they don`t find these (problems) out, how do they expect the directors to?”
Lafontant believes there`s little public understanding over the director`s role as policymaker, not manager. ”We call on our management team to report on what`s happening in the company,” she said. ”We cannot possibly go down into the troops to investigate. We have got to rely on people who are getting paid good salaries to make determinations.”
Continental is not the only ”problem” board on which Lafontant has sat. She also was a director of Bendix Corp., swallowed by Allied Corp. in a bitter, four-way takeover battle in 1982. She also is a member of the Pantry Pride Inc. board, which recently agreed to sell control of the company to MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings Inc. of New York.
Still, she has not soured on directorships, nor has she had second thoughts over her many commitments.
”I think I`m pretty fortunate to have such a problem life,” Lafontant laughed. ”As a lawyer, you deal with problems all through your career. It`s a question of how you deal with them, how you solve them. It can give you a lot of satisfaction–as long as you don`t take those problems personally.”
As far as the number of her commitments (she also is involved in nonprofit organizations), she says that when she has felt overextended, she has withdrawn from various boards.
With her pride clearly showing, however, she added that even if she felt she were overextended, ”I would never admit it.”
