A conversation with L. Douglas Wilder

Jack Glagola, News Editor

Former Governor L. Douglas Wilder is a man of many firsts — first Black Virginia senator, lieutenant governor, governor, first directly elected mayor of Richmond and now a distinguished professor at the VCU school that bears his name. He has spent several decades — he turned 94 years old this year — serving the Commonwealth and his community.

What follows are selected excerpts from The Commonwealth Times’ interview with the former governor.

This transcript has been edited for clarity. The full transcript can be found here.

On his mother, his biggest inspiration:

I liked reading, and my mother was very adept at reading and she liked crossword puzzles. She could solve the New York Times crossword puzzle in about a half hour. And she’d be upset if she didn’t get every word. So I got into that, and that’s how it broadened my vocabulary. And I had teachers who would not allow you to not “round” your D’s and speak with your T’s as you should, and so I guess what I was fortunate with was to have people who cared.

On education:

I was lucky to be surrounded with people who appreciated education. I’ve always prided my generation with carrying on and not being inventive to the extent that we did anything new. But the people in whose care we were entrusted knew we had a higher responsibility. That’s why I’ve always believed that education is still key to solutions to whatever problems you may have. It’s education.

On leadership:

Leadership. I stay with that. Leadership is the key, and leadership is a tautology. It defines itself. What does leadership mean? To lead. And what do you mean to lead? To be in front. What do you mean by that? Be ahead. Today, we suffer from a lack of it. People lamenting, “Oh, Trump is elected again!” He was elected before! We survived, did we have the best campaigner against him before? And I’m not speaking about Harris — Hillary. What was her message, if you could tell me? “I hung out with Jay-Z last night.” Do you remember when she came up with the commercial? That was supposed to be attracting Black voters. “I hung out with Jay-Z last night.” Who gives a damn! What does that mean to me?

On money being a driving force in politics:

You can’t escape it! They try to come up with some way around it, and then they have to say: “You’re right!” But still don’t stop. Don’t stop trying to find it, because it makes you learn more. Now, that being the case, if you recognize it and get to that point, then I understood early on what it meant. I decided that I was not just interested in a fair slice of the civic pie or the political pie. I wanted my hand to be on the knife that cut the pie.

On campaigning for lieutenant governor in Southwest Virginia:

The finest treatment that I had received in that campaign is from those very people. Because we were being prejudiced. A friend of mine who was from Christiansburg — a senator whose name was Madison Marye — he said, “Doug, I like your idea, and I think it’s great. But when you go out there campaigning, you go to a barbershop, you have to go to everyone. And every hand, you got to shake it. Every grocery store, you got to do it. You can’t leave anybody out.”

On Patrick Henry:

In going to the church and hearing the extolling of Patrick Henry and “Give me liberty or give me death,” I would say things to my father about it and it would rankle my father because his parents were slaves. He said, “Well, what did Patrick Henry do? Did he go and fight anywhere? Did he join any army? No, he went on up into Ashland and still worked his slaves.” So when you hear a slave owner speak of liberty and death, it’s a sham to begin with. But I always believed, and I believe now, that the fact that those words were there gave emphasis to what could be.

On his time serving Virginia:

Well, those things come and go. I’ve always considered it serving the people and doing what I thought could be done within the limitations of human accomplishment, and I found that in this capacity I’m able to share. But see, that’s why a lot of what I’m doing now is trying to advance the causes of historical Black colleges and universities. And I think it’s catching on, it’s doing better. But it’s not where it ought to be.

On meeting Ronald Reagan:

He had been shot. But he told me that he liked horseback riding. He said he was riding one day and he came to a stop, and his horse just right up threw him, and the spot he threw him in was loaded with stones. He said his head landed in the only spot in that area that wasn’t within two or three inches of a stone. He had always said just how lucky he was. I told him in a moment of brashness — I didn’t mean to be that way — I said to him, because of course they had predicted that because Reagan was a movie star, he was a pretender, he didn’t have the qualities of leadership, et cetera. So I said all that. Not in those terms, but I said, “They didn’t have the greatest prognosis for your success, how you’re doing. You were consigned to a position of not being able to lead.” Well, he said, “I could say the same thing about you.”

On Mayor Danny Avula and taxing buildings:

I think he’s got a grasp on understanding the money problem. It’s not an issue on race anymore. For instance: The state is occupying so many of the buildings and land that it’s been taken off the tax rolls because if the state owns it, the city can’t tax it. The state now wants the Altria building. You take that off the books, then what do we have? What are you going to tax?

On more Black people being elected:

When people ask me, “I want to run for office,” I ask, “How do you know that? What have you tried to do, what have you listened to? What do you want to do?” We have more Black elected officials in this country now than anyone could have imagined. In Virginia, you name it. So many of those problems are being addressed — or are they?

On Richmond’s future:

Richmond’s future depends a great deal on the state recognizing that it is the capital. The leadership, again, is going to be that which determines Richmond’s future.

On the most important quality for people to possess:

First, determine what you think is most important to you. Without someone else telling you. This is what you need to do. Think: I listen to that, I listen to what you say. Know who you are. You know that quote, “Know thyself, then proceed?” It’s as old as the hills. Very few people take the time to want to really examine themselves.