He blamed the riots at least partially on the U.S. government. Since leaving the foundation, Thomas has continued to serve in leadership positions in American corporations and has been on the board of the TFF Study Group, a nonprofit institution assisting development in South Africa since 2005.
With a reported $7.7 billion in assets when Thomas resigned his post in 1996, Thomas and his Ford Foundation staff used strategic sums of money—more than $200 million annually—to help needy communities, finance educational and cultural institutions, support civil rights in the United States and around the world, and strengthen and empower policy influencing organizations.
In addition, he became involved with the NAACP's (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) drive to increase black admissions at the university. Each officer had to undergo a performance review and justify the worth of his or her program.
An Evening With Franklin Thomas was a live to tape show honoring legal, business, and civic leader, Franklin Thomas.Chaired by Ford Foundation President Darren Walker, An Evening With Franklin Thomas featured musical performances by Dianne Reeves, Carmen Lundy, and Ntomb'khona Dlamini.Close friends and associates from Thomas’ time as president and CEO of the Bedford-Stuyvesant … Asked later how he made the remarkable transition from economic impoverishment to positions of leadership in the legal arena, he told the In 1967 Thomas caught the attention of New York senator Robert Kennedy. Vernon Jordan, former National Urban League president, hailed it as "the most significant black appointment in my time…the first real example of a case where whites have turned meaningful power over to a black," according to Among his first actions upon occupying the foundation's New York offices was the creation of the Local Initiative Support Corporation (LISC). It rehabilitated 400 brownstone units, established the Billie Holiday Theater, helped to start or expand 120 businesses in the area, and developed a $21 million mortgage pool.
"I would argue community development is emerging as a major revolution in the country," he told the Though not known for his public persona, Thomas was coaxed out of his quiet ways by the 1992 riots in Los Angeles. Early in 1979, Rockefeller Foundation head Dr. John Knowles convinced him to lead a year-long study of apartheid—a policy of political and economic discrimination against blacks practiced by the oppressive white minority government of South Africa.
Franklin Augustine Thomas is an American businessman and philanthropist who was president and CEO of the Ford Foundation from 1979 until 1996. During his ten years as president, the Restoration Corporation raised some $63 million in public and private funds—including a significant amount from the Ford Foundation. The organization currently is the second-largest philanthropic foundation in the U.S., distributing funds for initiatives relating to democracy, poverty, and cultural … Read MoreFranklin A. Thomas (1934- ) Kennedy was looking for ways to improve living conditions in Bedford-Stuyvesant and wanted to create a nonprofit community development agency to raise and coordinate public and private redevelopment funds.
He was also hired to chair the September 11th Fund to offer relief to the victims of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. He phased out Ford's heavy involvement in population control, environmental protection, school-finance reform, public-interest law and some other areas, while allocating more than half the foundation's budget for urban poverty and rural poverty and resources. In 1960 he returned to Columbia for his law degree. "We were taught," he told At 6 feet 4 inches in height, Thomas, a star center at Franklin K. Lane High School, was offered basketball scholarships by several major universities. When Thomas was just eleven years old, his father, James, a laborer, became disabled and later died.
Four older employees filed age discrimination complaints with the U.S. Biography. The grant-making focused more on issues of domestic poverty, with an emphasis on results-oriented programming rather than on studies.In many ways Thomas had worked to bring the experience he gained at the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation to the hundreds of community redevelopment agencies the Ford Foundation was supporting through the LISC. An alumnus of the Boys & Girls Club of Columbus, this 1997 American League batting champion stood out on the baseball team at Auburn University, earning a place on The Sporting News 1989 All-American Team. A flattered Thomas refused, telling Carter that the only federal job he wanted was the one Carter was about to occupy.Thomas left the Restoration Corporation in 1977, worked in private practice for a time, and for nine months filled in as head of New York's John Hay Whitney Foundation.