Interview with The History Makers, at his home, March 2018
In 1952, James H. “Bud” Ward became the first African American to graduate from the Cornell Hotel School. Ward remembers being called into Dean Meek’s office early in his first semester. Meek congratulated Ward on his accomplishments, and then asked him what he planned to do when he graduated.
“Dean Meek seemed to be fully aware and honestly concerned that Negroes were not being hired as managers in the hotel industry,” Ward says. “I gave him some weak response about there being hotels primarily for Negroes. That seemed to relieve him quite a bit.”
When graduation came, Ward’s classmates were lining up jobs with major hotels, and he hoped to do the same. But despite excellent grades and recommendations from several professors, Ward had just two offers: one from a small restaurant in New Jersey, the other from a food-service operation in Saudi Arabia.
“I was both angry and disappointed with the discriminatory practices in America, but I was determined to keep moving,” he says.
Ward passed on those offers and instead became cafeteria manager at Howard University, in Washington, D.C. A year later he went to work at a small hotel in Miami that catered to blacks. Ward next applied to graduate school at the University of Miami but was not admitted.
Fed up with the segregation and discrimination he saw in Miami, Ward joined a minority-owned public-relations firm in Washington, D.C., where he served clients such as Coca-Cola Company and Carnation Milk Company. After four years there, Ward was ready to strike out on his own. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 had just been signed, along with the creation of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to oversee discrimination complaints. Ward decided to become a diversity consultant and opened his own company, Special Market Resources, Inc. Soon he was helping several major corporations and government agencies comply with EEOC guidelines.
In 1966 Ward got a call from what was then Marriott-Hot Shoppes, where fellow Hotel School students Maurice O. “Bus” Ryan, Jr. ’54 and Winthrop W. “Bud” Grice ’53 were vice presidents in the company’s new hotels division. Ryan and Grice had recommended Ward as a speaker for the annual managers’ meeting. Ward agreed to speak, but only if he were first given the opportunity to conduct a small survey of the company’s employees. He spent several weeks speaking to employees at every level in the company’s hotels and restaurants.
When the time came to present his findings at the meeting, Ward took the stage and looked out at more than two hundred managers-every one of them white. Ward blurted out to the crowd, “I feel like a fly in a bowl of buttermilk.” No one laughed, and as Ward said later, “My comments about their EEO status went downhill from there.”
Ward pointed out that 70 percent of the company’s employees were black, all of them working in such positions as maids, cooks, waiters, and janitors. He called “unequal” employment the number-one civil-rights concern both throughout America and within Marriott-Hot Shoppes and ended with this challenge: “Motivating and developing productive working relation- ships with minorities may call for some to subdue their own feelings of prejudice. For the good of America and your company, your help is needed to move your minority workers beyond opportunity to productive achievement.” He left to scattered applause.
Two weeks later Ward got a call from J.W. “Bill” Marriott, Jr., himself. Marriott invited Ward to his office and when he got there, Marriott was sitting with a copy of Ward’s speech in front of him. Marriott said, “I’ve read your comments several times, and I gather you don’t think very much of our company, do you?”
Ward responded, “Mr. Marriott, I think you make a great Mighty Mo and Orange Freeze,” referring to the company’s signature burger and shake. Marriott chuckled, and said, “So why don’t you join us and help us do something about it?”
Ward consulted for Marriott for a few years, after which the company offered him a position as assistant vice president of industrial relations. Ward asked how many assistant VPs the company had. None, he was told; the other executives at his level were all VPs. Ward said he preferred not to establish another precedent, so after a bit of negotiation, Bill Marriott hired him as the corporate-wide vice president of management training and development. Ward thus became the first black vice president in the “white” hotel industry.
Ward worked at Marriott for almost twenty years, rising to senior vice president and a corporate officer. He introduced organization development theories and practices to the company, and his staff participated in the opening or acquisition of over 350 hotels worldwide. Ward was also on the team that designed and developed the “Courtyard by Marriott” concept.
After he retired in 1985, Ward started a company called Symbiont, Inc., which specialized in telecommunications network architecture, fiber cabling, and software development. Ward enjoyed working for himself again-so much so that, even though he was more than 80 years old, he was in the office every day.
Ward will be best remembered for opening up management opportunities for minorities and women during a tense period for civil rights. Marriott moved from having no black or women managers in its hotel division to having more than 15 percent when Ward retired-including several general managers and vice presidents.
Was it tough? He answers yes and no.
“I had the backing of the president, and the company was full of right-thinking people who believed in my motto: ‘Doing whatever’s fair is not always easy, but it’s right.”
From Hospitality Goes Global: The Cornell Hotel School by Bill Summers
High School class photo, est. 1940s
At the age of 18, Bud was drafted into the Navy and completed his basic training at the Naval Recruit Training Command, Great Lakes, Illinois. Eight weeks later, he was second in command, behind the officer of his troop.
Upon his discharge, Ward decided to use the GI Bill to apply for college. He was accepted, as one of the first African Americans, into Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration. However, at the suggestion of a friend, Ward postponed his studies at Cornell for two years to experience the socially and intellectually stimulating environment of Howard University.
While attending Howard University, Bud met Eulah Richerson, whom he married in March of 1951. He transferred to Cornell University in 1949 and received his BS degree in 1952, becoming the first African American to complete the Hotel Administration program.
As a Student at Cornell
Cornell’s campus, as a student with an unknown classmate.
Ward with his mother, Pauline (Kid), attending
Cornell University Commencement, 1952.
Manager at the Booker Terrace Motel
Miami, FL, est. 1955
Marriott profile photos, est. 1970s and 1980s
After a couple of years “consulting” at Marriott, Bud was offered a job as Assistant Vice President. Ward asked, “How many Assistant VPs do you have?” You will be the first he was told. No thank you he responded, I don’t want to be the first. He was subsequently offered a position as Vice President of Training and Development, and the rest, as they say, is history.
At Marriott, Ward was responsible for Organizational Development in the Hotel Division. During his tenure, he staffed and participated in the opening of 350 hotels, helped develop the Courtyard by Marriott chain, and supervised Marriott Hotel’s information technology and loss prevention teams. While at Marriott, Ward created and institutionalized training programs and initiated innovative Human Resources policies that continue to serve as benchmarks, not only for the hospitality industry, but other non-service related industries.
Upon retiring, Ward, again ahead of the curve, cashed in on his vast experiences in corporate America and became an entrepreneur. He founded Symbiont, Inc., an Information Technology (IT) firm. In the thirty-four plus years of existence, Symbiont has provided IT services to the Defense Department, the Executive Office of the President, the Mayor and Council of the District of Columbia, Verizon, AT&T, Phillip Morris, and countless others. At one time Symbiont employed over 250 associates and generated over $21 million in sales.
Bud, a firm believer in reaching back and giving to his community, served as mentor, member, or leader to over thirty-five local and national organizations, including National Alliance of Market Developers, The United Negro College Fund, Morris Brown College, Howard University School of Business, and a number of other civic and business organizations.
Ward was featured in a cover story article in Fortune Magazine on the August 22, 2005: being a pioneer and one of six unsung civil rights heroes — being among the first black men to fight their way into the executive suite.
The National Visionary Leadership Project (NVLP) is an organization that brings the generations together and creates tomorrow’s leaders by recording, preserving, and distributing, through various educational media, the wisdom of extraordinary African American elders who have shaped American history. In November 2005 Ward was recognized as one of NVLP’s Visionaries. Ward’s video interview can be found on YouTube.
In the December 2005 edition of HR Magazine, in another cover story article, Ward was recognized as one of fifty people who has most influenced the Human Resources profession during the last fifty years. Also recognized with Ward are other notables such as Isabel Briggs Myers, W. Edwards Deming, Peter Drucker, Cesar Chavez, Sam Walton, Lyndon Johnson, Tom Peters, Jack Welch, Jim Collins, Anita Hill, and Albert Dunlap.
In March 2006, The Jackie Robinson Foundation recognized Ward with five other corporate executives who individually broke the color barrier in the 1960s and became top corporate executives/officers in their firms. Also recognized were men from Exxon, Philip Morris, TRIA-CREF, Equitable, and General Foods.
Bud Ward passed away on July 31, 2019, peacefully at his home with his wife, Eulah R. Ward of 68 years and son, Sterling Andrew Ward. Preceded in death were his sons, Forrest Carlton Ward (Karen) and Charles Walker Ward, and sister, Barbara Vivian Wilson.
Photos, news clippings and biography provided by Sterling Ward
