Darry Hill - Creating Opportunities in D.C. - Part II: Michael Valliant

OXFORD, MD JANUARY 2023

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Darryl Hill: Creating Opportunities in Washington, D.C.

Part 2 by Michael Valliant

Football was the opening act for Darryl Hill. At University of Maryland, he did something that hadn’t been done before, becoming the first African-American football player to play Division I college football south of the Mason-Dixon Line. He broke the color barrier. Opportunities for others followed. And that is a theme that carried over into the next phase of Darryl’s life: creating opportunities for the Black community, especially around Washington, D.C.

After playing with Joe Namath and the New York Jets, Darryl realized that football had taken him as far as it was going to, so he looked for what was next. He attended graduate school for urban planning at the University of Southern Illinois, through a correspondence course for business executives. And since he was in New York City, he found a job there working for Continental Can Company.

“Continental Can was making an

honest effort to diversify its upper management ~ they didn’t have any Blacks in top management positions,” Hill said. “They thought this was a time to do it, and I was handpicked to be the first management trainee.”

Darryl learned firsthand what the term “elevator pitch” means.

“Continental Can was in a 40-story building in midtown Manhattan. I got on the elevator, and the president of the company was standing there and his office was on the top floor,” Hill said. “He knew who I was and he said, ‘You’ve got the real elevator pitch ~ ride with me up to the 40th floor and tell me everything you can tell me about yourself.’ After that, he gave me an

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open-door invitation and said to come talk to him anytime.”

Worried his ambition and opportunities were frowned on by other management employees, Darryl talked to his supervisor, who told him, “It’s easier for me to pull you down off the ceiling than to pick you up off the floor.” That fit well with Darryl’s aptitude for breaking through ceilings.

After Continental Can, he came back to his home city of Washington. The Interracial Council for Business Opportunities (ICBO) ~ one of the early groups working on minority business development ~ made him its deputy director.

Darryl’s next job was being named first executive director of the Anacostia Economic Development Corporation (AEDC).

“Anacostia was a very poor, economically depressed area in Washington, and the objective of the group was to develop minority businesses in the community,” he said.

One of the people on the AEDC board of directors was Katherine Graham, who owned The Washington Post. She took a special interest in Darryl and the work he was doing and helped connect him with some inspiring people.

Darryl remembers the day he found Constantinos Doxiadis in his office.

“He was the Frank Lloyd Wright of urban planning, one of the world’s most renowned urban planners,” he said. “He became interested in the American ghetto ~ they sent him to the Smithsonian, who sent him to the Anacostia Museum, who sent him to me. We spent a few days together surveying the Anacostia community, and he said we have to come up with a city plan that doesn’t let this happen again.”

Doxiadis invited Darryl to the Delos Symposium, a forum for discussion with some of the world’s leading minds for the study of human settlements. They came together in Greece on the Aegean Sea

“In order to create a better architecture- that is, a better habitat- we have to assist in the creation of a better way of living.” ~ Constantinos Apostolou Doxiadis

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for 10 days each year. Presenters included Buckminster Fuller, Margaret Mead, Marshall McLuhan, Arnold Toynbee and Jonas Salk. Darryl was asked to be a lecturer. Katherine Graham paid for the trip.

While at the symposium, he spent the most time with Salk and his wife and with Margaret Mead, who had put out a book on anthropology and race with James Baldwin titled A Rap on Race.

Darryl came back inspired and started helping build businesses throughout Anacostia, working with landlords, tenants and startups to help create jobs and make an impact.

During that time, the Greater Washington Board of Trade and the Chamber of Commerce formed an organization to promote minority business development. They ap-

Darryl Hill - Part II nority-owned businesses became Darryl’s mode of operations. And pointed Darryl the first executive then he decided to start his own director of the new organization, business. In the late 1970s, he nowhich he named The Greater Wash- ticed that he couldn’t find a single ington Business Center (GWBC). Black-owned fine dining establish-

“A great deal of the discrimi- ment anywhere he looked, in any nation I saw was economic. And city. He wanted to change that. the emphasis for trying to fix this problem was jobs,” Hill said. “But jobs weren’t the only factor ~ business ownership was key to creating opportunities, and there weren’t enough minority-owned businesses. I could see that if you’ve got a healthy minority business community, everybody is happy and we’re all working together.”

In the 10 years (from the late 1960s) he was at GWBS, Darryl helped open or fund more than 2,500 new businesses in Washington, D.C. Under President Richard Nixon, he and GWBS worked with the government to ensure government contractors would buy from minority vendors. They formed a group called the National Minority Purchasing Council, which is still around today as the National Minority Supply and Diversity Council. Darryl helped start that organization, and Nixon appointed him as its first co-chair.

Darryl also helped write the rules for section 8(a) of the small business investment act, which ensured equitable access to federal contracting opportunities.

Creating opportunities for mi-

Darryl with Barry Goldwater

“I wanted to open a Black-owned restaurant that was fine dining, that served ~ and I don’t like the term ‘soul food’ ~ that served Southern cuisine. A friend let me know they were shutting down the flagship location for Emerson’s Limited restaurant in southwest D.C., and we turned it into W.H. Bone and Company, opened in 1977. Our mantra was ‘chitlins on china.’”

W.H. Bone was a two-level facility that boasted a dining room on a mezzanine level and a main floor with a lounge, a full-time jazz combo that played every night and a bar where you could dine or drink. The waiters wore tuxedos.

It became the place to be and to be seen in D.C., with everyone from Muhammad Ali and Don King to one of their best and most frequent patrons, former U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater, coming to dinner.

People Magazine did a feature article with photographs and it was Darryl and Senator Goldwater on the cover.

“Barry Goldwater had a table that overlooked the main floor, right at the railing. He paid me for that table whether he came or not ~ every Thursday night, I was to block that table for him. He would come or he would send people, including one time the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Barry would go and hang out with everyone in the kitchen, and there is a picture of him and the chef holding a big catfish. He would go in my office and make phone calls. And he drank bourbon and branch water and asked me to keep a case of branch water there for him.”

There came a point where W.H. Bone was more fun for Darryl than it was profitable. He knew he needed to look for his next business opportunity ~ one that would take him to Russia, as it turned out.

But another experience in D.C. would prove to connect to Darryl’s adventures in Russia.

It was March 9, 1977.

“I was sitting in City Hall in the City Council chambers in the Wilson Building in downtown D.C. I was sitting in a chair just outside the door to where the City Council was in session,” Darryl said. “I hear this loud noise in the hallway. I didn’t know