Reginald F. Lewis

Reginald Francis Lewis was born on December 7, 1942, in Baltimore, Maryland. His parents, Clinton and Carolyn Lewis, separated when he was young and divorced when he was about nine; his mother worked as a waitress and department store clerk before joining the postal service, and after she married Jean Fugett Sr. in 1951, Reginald became the eldest of a family of six children. A standout athlete at Dunbar High School, he entered Virginia State University on a football scholarship and graduated in 1965.

Lewis went on to Harvard Law School — remembered as the only person admitted before formally applying — earning his degree in 1968. He practiced corporate law in New York and helped establish one of Wall Street's first Black-owned law firms, developing the deal-making expertise that would define his career.

Determined to do the deals himself, Lewis founded TLC Group, L.P., in 1983. His 1984 leveraged buyout of the McCall Pattern Company returned roughly ninety to one when he sold it in 1987. Months later, he acquired Beatrice International Foods — sixty-four companies across thirty-one countries — for $985 million, creating TLC Beatrice International Holdings, the first Black-owned business to surpass a billion dollars in annual sales.

Through the Reginald F. Lewis Foundation he gave millions to Howard University, Harvard, and other causes. He died of brain cancer on January 19, 1993, at age fifty. The Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture in Baltimore carries his name. He proved a barrier could be broken, and left the door open for those who followed.