A Multicultured Life: From the Little Red School House to Halls of Academe and Corporate Board Rooms

The daughter of a prominent Black businessman, Dolores Mae Duncan grew up in New York City during the exhilarating 1930s. A unique and progressive education at the famed Little Red School House in Greenwich Village helped Dolores prepare for a life she could not have imagined for herself. Her teen years in a white middle-class New England town taught her that privilege did not shield her from prejudice. While marriage to the young, dynamic Clifton R. Wharton Jr. may have seemed natural, she did not realize they were embarking on the adventure of a lifetime, one that would take them to the farthest reaches of Asia, the hallowed halls of academe, the most austere corporate boardrooms, and even the shadowy depths of Washington, D.C., politics. Throughout this life of adventure, Dolores Wharton witnessed firsthand the unequal treatment being afforded minorities and women. As a result, she leveraged her position and influence to develop corporate programs that changed countless people's lives in profound and meaningful ways. A Multicultured Life reveals an aspect of Black culture rarely explored, one crucial to understanding the full expanse of Black experience in America. But at its core, it is a love story: love of learning, of the arts, of civic duty, of family--and most especially the love between Dolores and Clifton Wharton, who have spent a lifetime lifting each other up when times were difficult and sharing the joy of lives well lived.