Doley, Harold Jr. 1947–

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Harold Doley Jr. 1947–

Securities broker

In the early 1970s, New Orleans securities broker Harold Doley Jr. became one of the first African Americans to own a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. A pioneer among minorities in the rarefied world of American corporate finance, Doley and his firm have done extraordinarily well in the decades since, and he even served in the Reagan administration partly as a result of his extensive ties to African governments for investment purposes. In the early 1990s, Doley and his wife purchased a lavish Hudson River-area estate built by Madam C. J. Walker, the first African American woman to become a millionaire.

Doley was the son of Harold Doley Sr., a New Orleans grocer. The Doley family was of mixed heritage, and Doley had red hair and a light complexion. The family’s roots in New Orleans stretched back six generations. The Doley’s were free blacks in the antebellum South, and like many others of their status, enjoyed the refuge provided by the relatively liberal atmosphere of New Orleans. As a child, Doley attended New Orleans’s segregated schools. For college he chose Xavier University, a private institution that was considered a training ground for African Americans from established Louisiana families like his own.

Entered the World of Finance

At Xavier, Doley began a student investment club, whose stocks performed admirably, and he looked forward to a career in finance. “I graduated from college on a Friday night and started in the brokerage business on Monday morning,” he recalled in a 1976 interview with Roy Reed of the New York Times. He went to work as an account executive with Bache Halsey Stuart, Inc., a brokerage house, in its New Orleans office. Doley recognized that solid financial success came from the creation of wealth through established channels. “Look at the blue bloods of this country,” he told the New York Times s Reed. “The Harrimans, the Morgans—all of them have their names on the doors of Wall Street investment houses. That’s where they got their start. They make up a cohesive, powerful group. And so far that group has not been tapped. I aim to penetrate.”

In 1973, Doley borrowed $90,000 and bought a seat on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). This feat landed him a guest appearance on NBC’s Today show. At the time, there were just two other African American-owned firms with a presence on the nation’s oldest and largest trading floor. Doley spent some time as an independent broker in New York before returning to New Orleans to found Doley Securities Inc. in 1975, and began trading on the NYSE on behalf of his clients. About two-thirds of his investors were African American-owned institutions, such as the National Insurance Association. One-third of his clients were white investors. In the New York Times article, Reed pointed out that there were 50,000 stockbrokers in the United States according to 1975 figures, and just 200 were African American. Doley’s on-the-floor trading was handled by a white associate and longtime Wall Street mentor. “I don’t look at my firm as a minority firm,” he told Reed, “but as a member firm on the New

At a Glance…

Born March 8, 1947, in New Orleans, LA; son of Harold Sr, (a grocer) Doley Sr.; married Helena Cobette (a school guidance counselor); children: Harold III; Aaron. Education: Xavier University, B.S.; attended Harvard University Office of Public Management program. Politics: Republican.

Career: Bache Halsey Stuart, Inc., New Orleans, account executive, early 1970s; Howard Weil Labouisse & Friedrichs Inc., assistant vice president, 1973-76; DoleySecurities Inc., New Orleans, LA, founder, 1975, and chair, 1975-; Minerals Management Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, director, 1982-83; African Development Bank, Abidjan, Ivory Coast, ambassador and executive director, 1983-85; instructor at Southern University.

Member: New York Stock Exchange, interracial Council for Business and Opportunity; advisory board, Lloyds of London.

Awards: Awards from Harvard Management School of Business and the Wall Street Journal; honorary degrees from Clark-Atlanta University, Bishop College, and ShawUniversity.

Addresses: Office —Doley Securities Inc., 616 Baronne St., New Orleans, LA 70113; 237 Park Ave., New York NY 10017.

York Stock Exchange whose president and owner happen to be black. I’m sure my clients don’t do business with me based on the color of my skin but because we provide proper services.”

Because of the success of his firm, Doley became a well-known figure in New Orleans financial circles. He was tapped to help negotiate the merger of two large African American-owned insurance firms, and became involved in the creation of Republic National Bank, one of New Orleans’s two African American-owned banks. His success and commitment to change also gave him entry into numerous charitable and professional organizations in New Orleans. Doley also became increasingly involved in Republican politics, which brought him to the attention of officials in the first Reagan administration during the early 1980s. He was offered a post as head of the Minerals Management Service, a new agency within the Department of the Interior that granted companies leases to explore federal lands for mineral wealth. Doley was charged with the task of collecting overdue payments from these companies, and put in place a better accounting system to collect revenues. Doley Securities had also been doing some business with governments in Africa by this time, primarily by raising private American funds for investment opportunities there. Doley’s stint with the Minerals Management Service had forged an alliance with controversial Secretary of the Interior James Watt and, in 1983, Doley was appointed by President Reagan as the American ambassador to the Ivory Coast. He was also named executive director of the African Development Bank located in the capital city of Abidjan. This consortium bank of 53 African nations had assets of $40 billion and was created to finance infrastructure development, such as roads and hospitals, on the African continent. Doley, James Watt told Tony Chapelle in the New York Times, “was determined to take on an ambassador’s job. I thought it was a dumb idea. I’m cause-oriented, and I didn’t think the job of ambassador advanced the cause of anything. But we didn’t want to lose him. So somehow I learned about the African Development Bank. I thought that there, Mr. Doley could increase people’s standard of living.”

Doley and his second wife, Helena, spent two years living in the Ivory Coast. Upon his return to the United States, he continued to be active in African investment opportunities, founding the U.S.-Africa Chamber of Commerce and selling bonds for the African Development Bank through his firm. In 1993, Doley purchased Villa Lewaro, the opulent mansion built by Madame C. J. Walker, who earned a fortune with her line of hair-care products in the early years of the twentieth century. Named by Italian opera singer Enrico Caruso in honor of Walker’s daughter, A’Lelia Walker Robinson, Villa Lewaro had been bequeathed to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, then later sold. In the 1980s, a developer tried to purchase the home to demolish it and build condominiums on the site, but the presence of two trees—one of them 300 years old—helped save the estate and earn it a spot on the National Register of Historic Places. Doley had long been fascinated by Madam Walker’s literal rags-to-riches story. “She was a genius,” he told Lynette Holloway of the New York Times, “and to walk the halls that she once walked and to sleep in the room where she once slept is a feeling that is indescribable.”