The chairman and CEO of the Goldman Sachs Group, Lloyd C. Blankfein, and Walter E. Massey, president of Morehouse College, announced a $2 million gift to the only all male historically black institution recently.
The gift will lay the foundation for The Goldman Sachs Leadership Chair in Civil and Human Rights. Morehouse is steward of the 10,000-piece Dr. King collection of memorabilia and hand-written sermons and speeches, including "I Have A Dream," and the Letter from Birmingham Jail. Dr. King is a 1948 graduate of Morehouse College.
"This generous donation represents yet another significant milestone in our ongoing partnership with Goldman Sachs," said Massey. "We will be able to fulfill one of the most important aspects of our stewardship of the Morehouse College Martin Luther King, Jr. Collection - making the papers available to scholars and others interested in studying the works of our most prominent alumnus."
"An important element of Dr. King's teachings is a call for each individual to feel a sense of responsibility for the community as a whole," said Blankfein. "We try to apply this lesson of leadership and accountability not only at our firm, but in the communities in which we live and work. We have enjoyed a long association with Morehouse College and appreciate the opportunity to deepen our relationship with this important institution in such a meaningful way."
The connection began nearly 100 years old, when John Hope, the first black president of Morehouse and Walter Sachs, the son of one of the Goldman Sachs' founders played leadership roles in the NAACP.
Black Engineer & Information Technology magazine also has strong link to Morehouse College. In 1997, Arthur E. Johnson, then a senior corporate vice president at Lockheed Martin Corporation, was selected as the Black Engineer of the Year Award
The most recent Morehouse man to be honored at a Black Engineer of the Year Award ceremony (BEYA) was Kelvin Burn, a senior systems engineer at Raytheon Company, who in 2007, received a Modern-day Technology Leader award.
