Dreams imagined ... aspirations achieved.

A Letter to My Grandchildren:

Dear Erika, Kristin, Gibby, Veronica, Teddy, Carter, and Melanie: It's hard to believe five years have passed since I last wrote you a letter of this kind. It is a joy for your Gramma Barbara and I to watch you develop into healthy, distinct young people, each with your own opinions and special interests. We have so many hopes and dreams for your future. It is a thrill to see you beginning to have hopes and dreams all your own.

During the last five years, our company and our family, like much of our nation, have prospered. We have also grown.

Now 30, Earl G. Graves Ltd. has higher sales, more employees and offers more (and more outstanding) products and services than ever before. Black Enterprise Unlimited has added the highly successful Black Enterprise/AXA Advisors Ski Challenge to its growing roster of annual events. Black Enterprise Books, launched last year, is quickly expanding its series. Our Kidpreneurs Program (your favorite division) is growing and making a wonderful impact on young people. And BLACK ENTERPRISE magazine, still the heart and soul of our company, now reaches a subscriber base that is 375,000 subscribers strong--and more than 3 million readers--and growing.

On the personal front, you are all growing beautifully as welt. It's amazing to see that our latest family additions, Carter Llewellyn and Melanie Eliza, are already, at ages three and one, respectively, bona fide members of your little team. Every time I look at you all, I am reminded of something I used to think only old folks said: how time flies, (No, this does not mean that Poppa is now old!)

We are blessed, and we are deeply grateful. But while we rejoiced in a few new arrivals during the last five years, we also lost my mother, Winifred Graves Pamphile, or Nana, as you called her. Nana was not only the last surviving parent of your Gramma's and mine, she was the last of her generation in our family, and her loss struck us to the core.

As we mark the magazine's 30th anniversary, I can't help but reflect on how proud Nana was of our work at BE, and of the enormous strides African Americans have made in this country on all fronts during the past three decades. She, and the others of her era, believed so wholeheartedly in the value of education, and the opportunities that would be afforded their children as a result of it, that they made sure we got solid schooling above all else. Despite a gross lack of resources, access, and opportunity for themselves, they never stopped pushing forward, they never stopped believing that their efforts would pay off in the end. They imbued us with their own unfulfilled dreams and then cleared the way for us to realize them.

Because of their hard work, determination, and sacrifice, many of my generation have exceeded their parents' wildest imaginings. Their unprecedented success is apparent not just in the material wealth they've amassed but in the degree of influence, respect, and acclaim they have attained in their own communities and throughout the nation and the world. It is important to remind ourselves from time to time that the entrepreneurial, professional, and economic strides and accomplishments that fill the pages of BE each month were unimaginable just a few short decades ago. BE has played a central role in touting that progress. I like to believe we helped fuel it as well.

But even as we pause to congratulate ourselves, our celebration is tempered by deep concerns. I worry that the same legislation and policies that enabled the advances of my generation, and that of your parents' generation, will no longer exist for your generation. And, if they don't, what will that mean?

The fact is that when BE premiered in August 1970, it was on the heels of some of the most rapid-fire and progressive change this nation has ever experienced. The court-enforced desegregation of the late '50s was followed by the Civil Rights Acts and affirmative action policies of the '60s and '70s. Those monumental breakthroughs gave African Americans a chance to advance during the last 30 years as never before. Why, then, have we entered this new millennium with so many of our children--children of your parents' generation--still living in poverty, still receiving a substandard (and in increasingly more cases, racially segregated) education, still locked out of job opportunities that will lead to other, better job opportunities, still being brutalized by too many of those whom we pay to protect us? Why? Because racism and discrimination are as alive and well today as they were 30 years ago.

As committed a champion as I am of success, the fact is that its trappings and its hype have distracted us from our higher purpose: the fight for true equal opportunity for all Americans. As a result, we are losing some of the ground that the previous generation fought for and gained for our benefit--and for your benefit. My parents never strayed from that purpose. Your parents are doing what they can to continue the battle in their generation. I hope you will lead the charge in your generation, as I have no reason to believe it will have yet been won.

Recently, our family gathered at St. Philip's Episcopal Church in Brooklyn to dedicate a stained glass window Gramma and I commissioned in honor of our late parents, Doris and James Kydd and Winifred and Earl Graves. While the dedication was to two specific sets of parents, it was also symbolically dedicated to all parents of the African diaspora. Designed by a talented young black artist, James Best (a former senior designer at BE), and rendered by a skilled craftsman, Patrick J. Clark, the window depicts many of the occupations these parents dreamed of for their children: architect, physician, professional athlete, scientist, judge, and so on. What I find so moving about the image is that it represents far more than dreams imagined. It depicts aspirations achieved.

With dignity and optimism, our parents and others of their generation paved the road upon which many of us traveled with confidence and pride. They did their absolute best for us, and we have made tremendous strides as a result. But a generation later, some of those paving stones have become cracked and loose. They need reinforcing, and your parents' generation must now take the lead in that effort. They must also build new pathways for your generation to follow. Ultimately, the responsibility will fall to you and those of your generation. Thirty years from now, some of you may be running this company. The world will be very different, I'm sure, but the fight for equal opportunity has no end in sight. I expect that your talents and ideas and commitment will be needed there as well.

The 30th anniversary issue of BE honors where we've been, and celebrates where we are. But the lasting message of this issue is our rededication and passionate commitment to where we're going--toward the creation of the better world to which you and your children are heir. One of my greatest dreams for you is that like your great grandparents, you will commit yourselves to hard work, education, spiritual strength, and the pursuit of true equality. If you do that, I do believe we will truly all one day be free--free to prosper, free to learn, free to realize our loftiest dreams and aspirations.