Reuben Shelton

 

From the humble beginnings as the son of Mississippi sharecroppers to holding the president’s gavel of the 33,000-member Missouri State Bar Association, with a stop in between to play basketball for the University of Kansas, Reuben Shelton has lived a life of Horatio Alger meets Hoosiers.

He strides confidently through a suburban restaurant for a midday lunch meeting. The way Shelton carries himself screams dignified. Today, the man who as a 6’6” Northwest High School basketball star battled Kirkwood’s Drew Rogers to a draw on March 8, 1972, is well known beyond his schoolboy athletic feats. Shelton is today recognized within the high and powerful corporate echelons of his hometown of St. Louis as one of the area’s top legal minds, a now retired corporate lawyer of impeccable skills.

 

Reuben Shelton has achieved a great deal of success in his life, and through it all he has never forgotten where he came from. Born and raised in north St. Louis city, Shelton was one of nine children. He says his family didn’t have a lot, but they always had enough to get by, adding that his parents always placed extra emphasis on education.

 “I was the youngest boy and the 8^th of nine children,” Shelton recalls. “My parents both were cotton farmers in Mississippi. We had relatives that had moved north to St. Louis and my parents decided in 1953 to follow. I was born here in 1954. My little sister was also born here. She was the 9^th and the youngest.”

 In 1944, ten years before Shelton’s parents migrated north from the cotton fields of Mississippi, Gunnar Myrdal published his landmark work, “An American Dilemma.” A majority of black adults, he found, who lived in the South were employed as unskilled and poorly paid laborers and sharecroppers. Less than 15%, one in eight, owned the land they cultivated and harvested. On the national level, only a trivial 5 percent of black men held down a job that was not manual labor – the white-collar occupations of an educated professional. Nineteen forty-four for black Americans in the deep south was not much different than 1844, the indignity of slavery now replaced with the spirit-snuffing trap of a sharecropper’s life. Jobs for blacks were low paying, had no security and mostly required monotonous back breaking repetitive field work. Blacks filled the manual labor cogs of an agrarian economy that whites would not do. Wanting something better for their offspring, many, like Shelton’s parents, headed north for post-war jobs in the factories of St. Louis.

 “Dad went to work on the evening shift at the old General Motors plant on North Kingshighway,” Shelton continued. “During the day, he drove a cab for the old Allen Cab Company. My parents insisted we get an education beyond a high school diploma. There was never any doubt that I was going to college. Watching my Dad was a great role model for me. He never talked or complained about his workload. It was just what he had to do with so many counting on him. So, he just did it with the hopes his kids could have lives where they would not have to (labor) like (he) did.”

Words, in the Shelton house, were not hallow. “He sacrificed so we didn’t have to. He was a great man.”

Shelton was raised in a safe and strong family at a time that black parents needed to expose their children to the crumbling wall of bigotry. His parents, he explained to me, made sure their children experienced racism personally. When such a slight happens to a child and not just around him, he develops a different perception than someone only living in a cocoon of an all-black culture. Shelton’s childhood gave him a blend of that subtle experience of racism, St. Louis style, without the hate that often burdens a talented young black man integrating a hesitant white society. It beat Mississippi. It is a lesson Shelton has parlayed into a career that leaves him today respected on both sides of what is still in St. Louis a wide chasm of racial divide.

Shelton saw first-hand the effects racism had on his father. “My dad was very light skinned for a black man.” Shelton produces on his iPhone a replication an old polaroid of his father, his mother and himself, taken when Shelton was in high school. “He could pass for being white. When he got hired here at the factory, he passed himself (off) as a white man. If not, he would not have been hired. Mom was dark skinned, and she could never be seen with him (by co-workers) so she stayed away from his workplace. I can remember driving in the car with dad and if he saw someone he knew from work, us kids would have to duck down; out of sight. Now, isn’t that sad? Later in life he was embarrassed by this, but really, in that time, he was doing what he had to do to keep his job and support his family.”

 A “proud product” of St. Louis Public Schools, Shelton attended college at the University of Kansas on a basketball scholarship. “The education you got at Northwest High School in my time was what you made it. I was always an interested learner through high school. I was in the local chapter of the National Honor Society.”

 Shelton is troubled today by the downfall of his once thriving boyhood home, the Hamilton Heights neighborhood. “I don’t know if there are more (today) than a few houses that are even livable. When the busing started the school died and then the neighborhood collapsed.”

I ask the lawyer of his educated opinion of the St. Louis schools forced busing program. “For some, it was great. For those left behind (in the city schools), no so great. There have for sure been many successes, black city kids who have the opportunity to attend the more academically challenged schools in the county. Also, that exposure to black kids in what before was an all-white environment, I believe was also good for the white kids. It really fostered, through contact, better understanding of each.” But, Shelton says, the black kids left in the city schools have not had society’s obligation to them for a free and adequate public education met. “There have been some individual successes,” he says, due to busing, “but overall it has been a systemic failure.”

“When I was growing up, we had no school sports until 9^th grade,” Shelton states. “We played all hours of the day and night at a neighborhood park named Visitation. Baseball and basketball.  There was no input from adults. The city would leave the lights on for us and that is all we needed. I had also played (basketball) on a team at Mathews-Dickey Boys’ and Girls’ Club over on North Grand and the summer before my freshman year in high school I was selected to play on the under 14 national team in Washington, DC. I was told that the best coach in the city was over at Northwest so that is where I enrolled. Someone complained about Northwest illegally recruiting me, I did not live in the Northwest attendance area and I could not get my eligibility until halfway through my sophomore year. Then my senior year, in 1973, I was hurt for half the year.” Also, a teacher’s strike took away three weeks of his senior season. “The only year in high school I played a full season,” Shelton recalls, “was 1972, my junior year.”

 The study of law was not a career Shelton initially saw himself pursing. “I wanted to be a professional basketball player, but it was apparent that wasn’t going to work out,” Shelton says today. His career as a Jayhawk was not what he had envisioned when he drove west on Interstate 70 in the fall of 1973. He played in seven games in the 1973-1974 season and redshirted in 1975. Shelton then saw limited action- seven games - in 1976. He finished his years as a Jayhawk with rather pedestrian totals: 42 points and 27 rebounds in 14 games. Shelton today harbors no illusions of his KU jersey ever finding its way to the rafters of venerable old Allen Fieldhouse to reside alongside those worn by Wilt, Jo Jo and Danny. Regardless, Shelton is a vocal and generous supporter of Kansas University. “The people who ran the university and the athletic department were extremely supportive of me. Even though I didn’t play my last year, they allowed me to keep my scholarship and finish my degree. I have always appreciated the start the University of Kansas gave me in pursuing my professional and career dreams.”

 “It was not what I had hoped for,” in terms of college basketball production, Shelton admits. “But, it (a limited college basketball career) put my head back into reality. I was raised that education was the key to a successful life. You can’t play basketball your whole life.” As he retraced his steps from four years prior, driving now east on Interstate 70 and back home to St. Louis, Shelton knew it was time to leave basketball in life’s review mirror.

 After graduation from KU, Shelton doubled down on the work ethic his parents had instilled in him. “I needed a job that could evolve into a good career. At that point, I had to figure out what I was going to do next. Law seemed like a good candidate.”

 Undergrad degree in hand, Shelton came back to St. Louis and received a law degree from St. Louis University and an MBA from St. Louis’ esteemed Washington University. Over the past 40 years he has amassed expertise in the legal realms of strategy, trial and public policy for corporate law on the international level.

Shelton is dedicated to his hometown’s wellbeing. He is out front in his support for the St. Louis chapter of the United Way.  “People usually only give what is asked. They need to be pushed to give to worthwhile organizations,” Shelton said. “The leadership societies help stretch people to the levels where they ought to be.” Shelton became involved with United Way after years of giving and volunteering with two United Way entities agencies: Mathews-Dickey Boys’ and Girls’ Club and Legal Services of Eastern Missouri. Shelton has served on the executive board of both nonprofits, but his connection to Mathews-Dickey dates back to his childhood.

His passion for philanthropy was ingrained early in life. As a child, Shelton spent a lot of time at Mathews-Dickey. He remembers watching his brothers playing baseball for the Knights and his mother making spaghetti for Martin Mathews, one of the club’s co-founders. Mr. Mathews sold homemade dinners to raise money for the club before it received United Way funding. “United Way (supports) agencies that do wonderful things for people,” Shelton said. “They serve segments of the society that others do not help. Organizations they support range from women’s aid, to school children, to the elderly.”

 In 1997, Shelton became the first African-American president of the 7,000-member Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis. He has also served as president of the 33,000-member Missouri Bar Association, the second African-American to hold the office.

 Many aspects of our 2019 society have remained consistent since 1972. As 19th century French journalist Alphonso Karr said, “the more things have changed the more they have stayed the same.”

I asked Rueben Shelton what has changed since 1972? “We would have never elected a man of color president in 1972,” he told me. What has not changed? “A man of color could never be president and act the way Donald Trump does.” White America would not tolerate such. “It took a black man like Obama, well-spoken and well educated who behaved with dignity, to be the first president (of color).”  A friend, Cliff Talton,  who in the 1960’s became  the first black policeman in the small town of Monroe City, MO once told me, “I felt like I had to be twice as good as any white officer, or I would not be accepted by either the white or the black community.”

 On September 24, 1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson issued Executive Order 11246, prohibiting employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, and national origin by those organizations receiving federal contracts and subcontracts. This law became known as Affirmative Action.

In 1967, President Johnson amended the order to include sex on the list of attributes. Executive Order 11246 also requires federal contractors  “ to take affirmative action to promote the full realization of equal opportunity for women and minorities. The founding principle of Affirmative Action is fairness.” Not surprisingly, President Trump’s Justice Department, in 2019, initiated  a project to identify and then sue universities that they deem to have affirmative action policies that discriminate against white applicants in the  admissions process.

 However, as Shelton noted during a lunch time conversation we had, the irony of the success of affirmative action is that the black middle-class community no longer lives within 'black community'.   

 Shelton has been retired from law since 2015. In 2020, he will begin a term as President of the national black collegiate social fraternity Kappa Alpha Si. “I joined as an undergrad at KU. We have been around for 108 years. Our list of pledges is outstanding,” he says. “I take a lot of pride in the fraternity and I am looking forward to serving as President.”

 Shelton resides in suburban west St. Louis County with his wife, D’anne. It is only 20 miles but a world away from the northside city streets he grew up on. His wife is a native of Kansas City. They met as undergrads at KU. Together they have raised three  daughters Christian, Brandi and Heather. They have a grandson to dote over, Garrett Reuben Shelton Blake.

Daughter Christian was a standout high school basketball player in the PHL. She, as point guard, quarterbacked the Gateway Tech Jaguars to the 1997 large school state championship. Her senior season, 1998, GT returned to the state final four and took third place. Christian played collegiately at St. Louis University. After four years as a corporate litigation lawyer, she made a road less taken career move, leaving the legal profession to become a middle school math teacher. The transition was seamless. In 2013, she was named the St. Louis county school district of Riverview Gardens’ Teacher of the Year.

Daughter Brandi attended suburban University City High School where Shelton was an elected member of the local school board. She has provided for the family another grandson, Boston Celtics rising superstar Jayson Tatum. Shelton had the pleasure of a front row seat for Tatum’s development as both a basketball player and a man. By 2019, before even reaching the legal drinking age of 21, Tatum had established himself as an NBA superstar with an equally high reputation for character off the court. He is a favorite St. Louis son with a future that has no ceiling. Currently, Brandi lives in Boston with Jayson and oversees his daily schedule.

 Ironically, third daughter Heather attended Kirkwood High, her dad’s nemesis in 1972. She is today a rising executive with an airline, currently living in Dallas, TX. Her current corporate role is serving as a Human Resource Manager and according to her proud father, she is quickly climbing the corporate ladder. “Three good solid daughters and two grandsons to spoil,” is Shelton’s response when I asked him  to describe his immediate family. “Sports are great,” he says, “but like my parents did with me, we always with the girls stressed education first.”