Russell L. Goings, Jr.

1932(?)–

Businessman, art collector, writer

Russell L. Goings Jr. forged a unique career path from sports to business to art. Kept from playing professional football by injury, Goings set his sights on working on Wall Street in the pre-civil rights era. He opened Wall Street to a new market of investors, which built his reputation as a "rainmaker," as skillful stockbrokers as known. His ownership of First Harlem Securities, the second African-American-owned brokerage to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange, marked a high-point in his business career. Yet he went on to accomplish much more: he served as the first black chairman of the Studio Museum in Harlem, accumulated one of the largest collections of artist Romare Bearden's artwork and documentation, and late in life reinvented himself as a writer.

Had a Rough Start

Little about Goings early life would indicate the diverse success he has enjoyed as an adult. Goings was born during the Great Depression in Stamford, Connecticut, where his parents, Russell Sr. and Rose Goings, had moved from South Carolina in search of better opportunities. Until his father found steady work during World War II, Goings and his family—which included five brothers and sisters—suffered the indignities of accepting welfare and scrambling at the local rail line for coal scraps to feed their stove.

Discomforted by his circumstances, Goings acted out. He fought with his classmates and rejected school, especially reading. His teachers slotted him as a slow learner, the result of which did not endear school to young Goings. Reform school seemed the only option left to put Goings on the right track by his sixth-grade year. But that year a counselor discovered that Goings had dyslexia, a disorder that impeded his ability to learn to read and write using traditional methods. The counselor employed comic books to engage Goings with text, and Goings soon proved himself an able and eager student. He also developed into a skilled football player and helped his high school team win two state championships.

Explored Various Interests

Goings graduated in 1951, but put off college for a four-year stint in the U.S. Air Force. He became an instructor of specialized tactics of evasion and escape, some of which he learned at a martial arts training institute in Tokyo, Japan. Discharged in 1955, Goings left the military with a sense of discipline, a wife, and a scholarship to attend and play football at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio. The coach at Xavier, a native of Stamford, had remembered Goings from his high school days.

Goings enjoyed the simulation of Xavier's academic life. He also embraced the Jesuit traditions at the school. Before long, he earned entrance to the university's branch of Alpha Sigma Nu, a Jesuit honor society, which he continued to support into his later years. By the time he graduated in 1959, Goings had earned a scholarship to study marketing in graduate school. Yet academics were not the only driving force in Goings' life at Xavier. He proved himself to be a standout on the football field, earning recognition as a lineman in his senior year. Upon graduation he opted to take a position on the Saskatchewan Rough Riders team of the Canadian Football League. By 1960 the Buffalo Bills of the American Football League had come calling. But a knee injury ended his football career before the start of his first season with the Bills.

Goings took the news in stride and charted a new course for himself: to become a stockbroker. His goal seemed a bit lofty at the time. The chances of a black man getting a job with a Wall Street stockbrokerage then were "nil to none," as Goings remembered to Frank McCoy in Black Enterprise. Yet the memory of a key moment in Goings's youth spurred him on. As a high school student, Goings had made extra money shining shoes. One day as he kneeled to shine the shoes of a stockbroker, he overheard the broker complete an investment call. In the time it took Goings to earn his 25 cents for polishing the man's shoes, he noted that the man had made $200 by investing. That moment lingered in Goings's mind; he saw no reason why he too could not become stockbroker.

Took on Wall Street

Before the end of the year he left the Buffalo Bills, Goings landed a job as a broker at the J.W. Kaufmann & Co. in New York. Goings took to the work quickly. Moreover, he recognized a profitable opportunity: as a black stockbroker he could open investing to the rising tide of moneyed black athletes and entertainers. "I networked," he explained to Greg Schaber on the Xavier University Web site. He haunted the hotels and clubs where he could find visiting sports teams and jazz musicians, picking up card games or hanging out with them at the bar. He made friends and soon had a growing list of clients. Then he started landing bigger fish: by the end of the 1960s, the National Basketball Association Player's Association had secured Goings as a financial advisor.

Goings' employers took notice. He so impressed the management at Shearson Hammill in Harlem that in 1968 he became the first black branch manager for the firm. Goings led his branch to became a top earner for Shearson Hammill, according to Black Enterprise. At Shearson Hammill, Goings fine-tuned his investment strategies. After working to persuade more blacks to invest in the stock market, Goings began to ponder how to invest profitably in black businesses. His most notable investment was in Essence magazine, which started with the goal of developing the economic, political, and social power of black women. Goings and a handful of others working on Wall Street guided Essence through its first years, which were "difficult ones," the magazine's co-founder and now CEO Edward Lewis wrote in Essence on the occasion of its thirtieth anniversary. "We were heavy with trepidation, detoured by lack of financial backing and sometimes halted by the racial climate of the time." Thanks to Goings' and others' "business acumen," the magazine prevailed. "I call him the 'Godfather of Essence,'" Lewis, told Schaber. "He is a visionary…. He is a role model."

Goings used his business acumen for his own benefit as well. In 1971 he purchased his branch of Shearson Hammill. He renamed it First Harlem Securities and spent $250,000 to buy a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, becoming the second African-American-owned business to do so. Goings structured his company to include several principals with voting stock, which in turn brought more blacks into the power center of the stock exchange. "It changed the character of Wall Street," he told McCoy. Another bonus to First Harlem Securities' first year was that the largest company in the country, General Motors, contracted with it and the only other African-American-owned stockbrokerage on the NYSE to purchase stocks for its enormous pension fund. Goings marked the year as the time when "the walls came tumbling down" for blacks in the market, as he put it to McCoy.

At a Glance …

Born in 1933(?) in Stamford, CT; married Evelyn N. Boulware; Education: Xavier University, BA, 1959; studied writing at Fairfield University, 1999–2001. Military service: U.S. Air Force, 1951–55.

Career: Saskatchewan Rough Riders, Canadian Football League, professional football player, 1959; Buffalo Bills, NY, American Football League, professional football player, 1960; J.W. Kaufmann & Co., NY, stockbroker, 1960; several New York stockbrokerages, stockbroker, 1960s; Shearson Hammill Inc., Harlem, NY, branch manager, 1968; First Harlem Securities, NY, owner, 1971–76; art dealer, 1978–; writer, 1994–.

Memberships: Alpha Sigma Nu; Studio Museum in Harlem (first black chairperson).

Awards: Wall Street Hall of Fame, inductee, 1999.

Addresses: Home—New York City.

A few years later, Goings was at loggerheads with the stockholders of the firm over his desire to restructure First Harlem Securities. The conflict led to his departure from the company in 1976. Two years later, he left Wall Street with a new vision of his career. He had decided to become an art dealer, more specifically a dealer of African-American art.

Found New Life in Art

Goings thus shifted from opening blacks to the benefits of America's powerful economy to helping to establish their place in America's highest culture. The museums and galleries in New York City are home to the country's most diverse and prestigious art collections. Goings had been frequenting them for years in the company of his close friend, the now-renowned artist Romare Bearden. Bearden opened Goings to the wonders and importance of art, providing him with the knowledge he needed to promote African-American art.

Goings' friendship with Bearden began in 1976, when the two met at a gallery exhibition of Bearden's work. They soon discovered mutual interests in sports and art and began to meet regularly to watch football or tour museums and galleries. Goings also spent hours in Bearden's studio while he painted. "He was my mentor," Goings explained to Schaber. Over the years a strong friendship grew. By the time Bearden's health began to deteriorate, Goings offered unfailing support, acting as chauffeur, nursemaid, fitness trainer, and companion, until Bearden's death from cancer in 1988.

In Bearden's last years, Goings committed himself to preserving his friend's legacy. He recorded nearly 40 hours of videotaped interviews with Bearden, wrote four volumes of notes regarding their conversations about art and life, and collected an assortment of Bearden's art and sketches. Goings was very conscious about his task: he was ensuring Bearden's legacy. "I've got so much to say," Bearden had told his friend, as Goings related to Samuel Freedman in the New York Times. Bearden "was very aware of the historical importance. He wanted to pass it on. And so he let me behind the veil. I acquired a side of him that nobody else had ever seen," related Goings. After Bearden's death, Goings opened his collection to various museums in retrospective exhibitions of Bearden's work.

Not long after Bearden's death, Goings began to explore his own creative impulses as a writer. In the 1990s he met award-winning poet Kim Bridgford at Fairfield University during a trip to promote Alpha Sigma Nu there. Soon he sought out Bridgford to help him work on his epic poem, The Children of Children Keep Coming. Goings attended classes and, by 2001, had created a 300-page masterpiece, which he read publicly. "The Children just leapt off the page," Bridgford told Xavier Magazine. "It's one of the most impressive pieces that I've ever read. It's just so clearly great art." After his time at Fairfield, Goings continued to write manuscripts longhand in his New York City home. Rather than publish his work in print form, Goings worked to shape his writing for performance and continued to read selections publicly.

Selected works

(Executive producer, with Evelyn N. Boulware) Griots of Imagery: A Comment on the Art of Romare Bearden and Charles White, Publishing on a Shoestring, 1993.

Sources

Books

Bell, Gregory S., In the Black: A History of African Americans on Wall Street, John Wiley and Sons, 2002.

Periodicals

Black American Literature Forum, Spring 1985, pp. 40-41.

Black Enterprise, March 1980, p. 37; August 1995, p. 94; October 2006, p. 145.

Essence, May 2000, p. 20.

New York Times, December 28, 2004, p. E1-E8.

On-line

"The Art of Friendship," Xavier Magazine, www.xu.edu/magazine/archives/read_article.cfm?art_id=1194&CFID=10797682&CFTOKEn=60071666 (October 31, 2006).

"Department of Art: Bearden," Xavier Magazine, www.xavier.edu/art/bearden.cfm (October 31, 2006).

"Pathways to The Imagination 'creative Writing 101'," Yale: New Haven Teachers Institute, www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1995/4/95.04.06.x.html (October 31, 2006).

"Poetic Justice," Xavier Magazine, www.xu.edu/magazine/archives/read_article.cfm?art_id=697 (October 31, 2006).