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[[image — black and white photograph showing three African American men in suits standing around a small African American boy wearing a plaid jacket and tie.]]

E. FREDERIC MORROW
Administrative Assistant to the President

When President Eisenhower named E. Frederic Morrow as his administrative assistant in 1955, this represented the first time in U.S. history that a Negro held an executive position on a presidential staff.

Born in Hackensack, New Jersey in April 1909, Morrow graduated from Bowdoin College and later received an LL. B. from the Law School of Rutgers University. In the interim period, he had been business manager of “Opportunity,” the office house organ of the National Urban League; Coordinator of Branches for the NAACP, and a major in the Armed Forces during World War II.

In 1952, after three years in the public affairs division of the Columbia Broadcasting System, he became part of Eisenhower’s presidential campaign staff, and travelled some 100,000 miles all over the country on behalf of the Republican nominee. The following year, he became Advisor on Business Affairs to the Secretary of Commerce and was in close liaison with Congress on all legislation affecting his department.

After six years of service with President Eisenhower (1955-1961), Morrow left Washington and the New Democratic Administration to become Vice President of the African-American Institute—the largest privately endowed foundation in the United States. Its main function is to improve American economic and cultural relations with the nations of Africa.

More recently, he has been appointed assistant vice president of the Bank of America, thus becoming one of the very few Negroes holding a major post in this section of the financial world. 

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