Family of business pioneer Earl Graves remembers his accomplished life
The family of the late Earl Graves, the business pioneer who founded Black Enterprise Magazine 50 years ago, spoke with News 12 to reflect on his remarkable life.
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Apr 16, 2020, 10:19 PM
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Updated 1,605 days ago
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The family of the late Earl Graves, the business pioneer who founded Black Enterprise Magazine 50 years ago, spoke with News 12 to reflect on his remarkable life.
The 85-year-old Scarsdale man was recently laid to rest after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease.
His son, Earl “Butch” Graves Jr., says his father introduced hundreds of thousands of African Americans “the prospect of believing and understanding that they, in fact, can be a successful entrepreneur.”
Graves grew up in more humble surroundings in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. He was a Green Beret in the U.S. Army’s Special Forces and worked for three years for Robert F. Kennedy.
Despite his success, family members say Graves treated everyone with respect. He was a parishioner at Grace Baptist Church in Mount Vernon, where the Rev. Franklin Richardson knew him for 40 years.
"Very seldom in your life do you meet somebody with such great accomplishment, but very seldom do you get a friend like I had with Earl Graves. It was a deep and rich friendship," said Rev. Richardson.
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