‘A lot of firsts’

Joel Ferguson’s life and philosophy, in his own words

Posted

Joel Ferguson’s Old Town office suite was packed with cool art, from abstract paintings to traditional African sculpture. A slender ladder carved out of a tree trunk, from the Dogon people of West Africa, rises in the corner of his conference room.

But the chairman of the MSU Board of Trustees, heavyweight real estate developer, national Democratic Party player and regional power broker was not an aesthete or a history buff. When I asked him to single out a favorite or two on a visit to his office in 2015, he begged off.

“I never thought of it that way,” he said. “I like them all.” Art, he explained, lubricates deals and builds client confidence.

In spite of his quiet voice and low-key manner, there was nothing idle about Joel Ferguson. Even golf was no idle pastime.  He relished a story about golfing with former President Bill Clinton in 2007 at Oakland Hills in Rochester.

“Joel, I’m one up,” Clinton told him when they reached the 15th hole.

“Mr. President, I don’t want to start any stuff, but do you know you’ve been deducting two balls on a lot of holes.”

Ferguson loosed a high, infectious laugh.

“They want you to give ‘em some shit,” he said. “Everyplace else they go, they’ve got people who are totally subservient or they want something.”

Ferguson didn’t even reminisce idly. Every story punched in and did its job. This one said: I speak truth to power. (And I golf with Bill Clinton.)

Photo by Bruce Cornelius
Ferguson served as mid-Michigan campaign manager for U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, D-New York, in his run for the presidential nomination in 1968, when Kennedy campaigned in Lansing.
Photo by Bruce Cornelius Ferguson served as mid-Michigan campaign manager for U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, D-New York, in his run for the presidential nomination in 1968, when Kennedy campaigned in Lansing.

Ferguson grew up on Chelsea Street, between Allegan and Washtenaw streets on the near west side, “a little street where no one had anything.”

“We used newspapers wrapped together with string for a football,” he said.

As a young man, he had a couple of instructive run-ins with Chris Baryames, of Baryames Cleaners fame.

“Twice I worked for him. Fired me both times,” he said.

In the 1940s and ‘50s, Baryames and his brother, Chuck, owned a hat stand and shoeshine place downtown. In his early teens, Ferguson worked there for a few weeks, lying about his age. When the work permit never came, they fired him.

Years later, while playing on the freshman basketball team at Michigan State, Ferguson had a night job cleaning Baryames’ store on the Triangle property downtown, later the site of one of Ferguson’s more controversial developments, the former Michigan State Police headquarters.

Ferguson missed a Friday night cleaning because of a basketball scrimmage, got up early Saturday to do the job, and got an earful.

Ferguson recalled his boss harping at him: “You missed the dirt here, you missed the dirt there.” Baryames expected a college athlete to move heavy things and clean behind them.

“For what you’re paying me, I get what’s in the open and don’t look anyplace else,” Ferguson retorted.

That night, Ferguson got a pink slip. “After you clean the place tonight, pick your check up Tuesday,” it read. He called Baryames immediately. “Since I’m fired, the place won’t be clean tonight either,” he declared.

He left the point of the story — Joel Ferguson doesn’t settle for a bad deal — unspoken, but it’s not hard to connect the dots, all the way to Ferguson’s break with developers Leo and Chris Jerome, his erstwhile partners on the massive Red Cedar project on the city’s east side.

Years later, Ferguson and Baryames were both on the City Council and became friends. There was a message in that story, too. Ferguson prided himself on playing well with others.

“I get along with Brian Jeffries, Carol Wood and Virg Bernero, you know?” he said with a grin. (Wood and Jeffries were the former Lansing mayor’s eternal nemeses.) “I tease Virg all the time. Jesus Christ, how you folks get along with each other hasn’t got anything to do with me.”

As a playground director at the old Main Street School, Ferguson found himself a go-between in a dispute between the city and aggrieved students.

“They were just pacifying us,” Ferguson said. “No one planned on doing anything, and they would just wear us out with all these meetings.”

So he decided to run for the City Council himself and became the first African-American to win a seat.

“People thought so much of my mother they ended up voting for me,” he said. Ferguson’s mother, Josephine Ferguson Wharton, was the first female president of the Lansing branch of the NAACP. She died in 2003 at 87.

“There’s been a lot of firsts with him,” Ferguson’s longtime friend, the Rev. Michael Murphy, said. Murphy died in 2014.

The bond between Ferguson and Murphy was both political and personal. Murphy officiated at the funeral of Ferguson’s brother, Brian. Ferguson was a leading fundraiser in Murphy’s bid for the state Senate.

“Joel doesn’t give up after the first ‘no’ or second ‘no,’” Murphy said.

“Developers are A-type personalities. Look at the Eydes or any of the others. They keep pushing and pursuing. I don’t think he’s been ruthless. He’s been persistent. He’ll find another angle.”

Murphy cited the downtown House Office Building, with its conspicuous bridge of tinted glass, developed by Ferguson and an unlikely partner, Gary Granger.

“They worked together, a Democrat and a Republican, to put that together,” Murphy said.

As treasurer of Jesse Jackson’s successful 1988 Michigan Democratic primary campaign, run by Ferguson, Murphy had a front row seat to the defining achievement of his friend’s career.

“Certainly, Joel’s influence began to take off because of the Jackson campaign,” Murphy said. “It surely surprised a lot of people. For Jackson to win a big state like Michigan got a lot of attention, and Joel got a lot of that attention.” Ferguson went on to serve 20 years on the Democratic National Committee and became its vice chairman.

In 1988, candidates Michael Dukakis, Dick Gephardt, Al Gore and Paul Simon each paid a $1,000 fee to get on the Michigan primary ballot. Ferguson did it the hard way, turning in 22,000 petitions for Jackson.

“I wanted to test our organization,” Ferguson explained. “If we could get petitions, I knew who was working in each part of the state and where we should shore it up.”

Instead of doing airport hops, Ferguson barnstormed across the state with Jackson on a bus tour. In a shocker, Jackson won the primary by a 2-to-1 margin, winning two-thirds of the delegates.

“It was a grassroots campaign that went from Detroit to Grand Rapids to Muskegon, Benton Harbor, urban communities in particular,” Murphy recalled. “It was intense. We were knocking on doors. Didn’t have a lot of money to purchase ads and that sort of thing.”

“I ended up being called the miracle man and it gave me this national reputation,” Ferguson said. “Bill Clinton runs for president, they call me.”

Ferguson said there was “talk” about an ambassadorship to Jamaica under Clinton, but he declined the job. “I told the president it was a place I’d like to visit but not stay,” Ferguson said. Clinton appointed him to the board of directors of Freddie Mac.

Ferguson must be tired of being asked why he supported Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama in 2008, but he seized upon the question to make a point.

“In most settings I’m in, I’m in the minority,” Ferguson said. “I’m the only Black in the meeting. If I can’t get along with the majority and judge people based on their merit … .”

He stopped in mid-bromide and wrestled the principle to more familiar turf.

“The thing I love about sports is that most people who play sports aren’t prejudiced,” he said. “You take Jack Kemp, a conservative Republican. He was a quarterback for the Buffalo Bills and the guys blocking for him were Black.”

In the meantime, Ferguson dropped aspirations for higher office. He ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in 1994.

But he never minded being called a power broker.

“I’m flattered,” he said. “People are stating a fact.”

There were consequences to his reputation. When he showed up at a reception or other event, people wondered: Why is he here? When Ferguson showed up at a lunch at Lansing Community College in 2008 and talked with Ron Wright, a candidate for LCC president, a small firestorm broke out. Was Ferguson putting his thumb on this scale, too? Ferguson’s role in the selection of MSU President Peter McPherson and football coach Bobby Williams was already common knowledge.

Ferguson waved the idea away. He claimed he didn’t pay attention to such things. “It’s not for any other reason than there’s a personal relationship and a personal trust which, I guess you could say, makes me a power broker,” he said.  “It’s not a case of quid pro quos. It’s trust and friendship.”

In 2015, it looked as though Ferguson’s loyalty to the Clintons might pay off again. With Hillary Clinton favored to win in 2016, Jamaica, or some ambassadorial equivalent, looked pretty good to Ferguson.

“Next time, when Hilary wins, if she thinks I could serve someplace else, at this stage of my life, I would do it,” he said.

Needless to say, history had other plans. There was no Clinton victory in 2016 and no Jamaica assignment for Ferguson. But there was still plenty to do at MSU.

“I like what I’m doing at Michigan State,” Ferguson said. “I don’t feel like campaigning for statewide office today,” He was proud that his fellow trustees elected him chairman five times.

“He’s in a good place as a developer and MSU trustee,” Murphy said. “To be more public would probably bring greater scrutiny.”

But that mockingbird stopped singing, too. The public scrutiny came anyway, and it proved to be Ferguson’s undoing as MSU trustee. When the Larry Nassar scandal broke, the MSU administration came under withering fire for its conduct before, during and after Nassar’s criminal rampage at MSU. Ferguson was widely seen as unsympathetic to Nassar’s victims, dismissing their trauma as “the Nassar thing” in a radio interview. The one-time civil rights pioneer had become a figurehead of the old guard, an obstacle to be swept away. Ferguson’s support of Republican Gov. John Engler as MSU’s interim president when Lou Anna Simon stepped down only poured fuel on the flames. His long tenure as MSU trustee ended in 2020, but the many firsts he racked up are still on the record books, for anyone who cares to look.

Comments

No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here

v


Connect with us