Paul J. King Jr. has been the catalyst for positive change in Chicago construction and on jobsites nationwide.

国王的简历提出了案子。作为芝加哥联合建筑商协会的执行董事，他帮助组织了全国少数民族承包商协会。他还创立了UBM Construction，该建筑成为伊利诺伊州最大的黑人承包商。

金还成立了O'Hare Development Group，该小组是该州最早拥有的少数民族开发商之一，甚至成为美国劳工部的顾问，以制定有关联邦资助的建筑合同的少数派承包商和劳工参与规则的努力。

Yet before all of that, it was organizing and standing up to a closed system that kept Black Americans out of building trade unions and the federally funded projects in their Chicago neighborhoods that first put ENR Midwest’s Legacy Award recipient at odds with business-as-usual.

保罗·金（Paul King）与已故的帕伦·米切尔（Parren Mitchell）和他的国会助手之一，当时商人和立法者起草了联邦合同语言，这将被称为平权行动。
照片由Jr. Paul King提供

为代表而战

In 1969, King led a group of 80 black contractors known as the West Side Builders Association in a peaceful protest that shut down a federally funded construction project on West Douglas Boulevard. It was the first of more than $80 million in closed projects the group opposed, forcing local trade unions and the Associated General Contractors to the negotiating table to discuss how to open the trades and contracting industry to Blacks. At the time, the unions were 97% white. Negotiating for the unions and contractors at the time was Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley.

“We wanted our fair share of jobs, our piece of the pie,” King says. “Blacks would pass construction projects in their neighborhoods and see nothing but white workers. It was a slap in the face and a daily insult.”

对于国王来说，这将是一场职业生涯的斗争，为在芝加哥和华盛顿特区的领导者中为建筑业中的黑人拥有的企业创造机会。推动更多地获得联系，贷款和有利可图的公共项目，这些项目可以将小承包商变成较大的承包商。新利18备用网址1974年，他因其努力而被任命为新利18备用ENR新闻记者。

金甚至在1975年成立UBM之前就一直对建筑业的业务兴趣。金的叔叔教他绘画，这是他未来建筑事业的基础。

保罗·金（Paul King）在此插图中在综合建筑咨询中庆祝五年的业务发展。
照片由Jr. Paul King提供

Actions of Affirmation

金在2009年的回忆录《建筑中的平权行动》中，回忆起40年的计划，旨在为少数民族拥有的少数族裔企业签订联邦合同的百分比。As an adviser to U.S. Rep. Parren Mitchell—the first black congressman from Maryland and a founder of the Congressional Black Caucus—King was instrumental in the legislator’s addition of an amendment to a 1976 public-works program that required state and local governments applying for federal contracts to reserve 10% of funds for minority-owned businesses.

“He and Parren Mitchell got together and wrote a lot of the federal affirmative action bills that were actually implemented,” says John Bolden, an engineering principal at Comprehensive Construction Consulting and King’s business partner. “It more or less provided opportunities, not just only for general contractors in the Chicago area, but it affected general contractors in the construction industry nationwide.”

In 1969, Paul King and the West Side Builders Association stood up against trade unions and the contractors for which they worked for excluding black workers and eventually shut down 80 worksites.
照片由Jr. Paul King提供

That contract language became standard for federally funded projects. “One out of every seven jobs is in some way related to construction. It’s a big, big business,” King says. “In trying to advance the Black contractor, we’re talking about trying to stimulate an agent for the cause of Black economic development. It’s not just trying to make an individual rich; it is a process toward Black economic empowerment.”

King participated in a Chicago Tribune series of investigative articles that highlighted supposed minority subcontractors hired onto large projects such as the McCormick Place expansion that were only minority on paper, without a Black face on the site.

金说：“那些阵线和那些做这种事情的欺诈者，他们每个人都从黑人企业的成长和发展中脱颖而出。”“杰西·杰克逊（Jesse Jackson Sr.）的兄弟诺亚·罗宾逊（Noah Robinson）以这样做而闻名。”

Robinson, Jackson’s half-brother, operated several Chicago companies that capitalized on programs to aid minority businesses, but often hired white-owned firms to do the work. He was eventually convicted of unrelated racketeering, narcotics and murder-for-hire charges.

金还说，观看政策和合同语言偏离要求少数派代表的要求，要求少数群体或妇女拥有的公司，这导致更多违反法律原始意图精神的过程的滥用。他指出，当公司实际上是由男性控制的，抑制黑人和少数族裔企业家精神的承包商，只是将妻子或其他女性亲戚列为最高领导角色。

“Now, it’s everybody and their mother and a lot of folks who never even saw a protest march that are benefiting from affirmative action legislation,” Bolden says.

照片由Jr. Paul King提供

Educating the Next Generation

在国王的激进主义中，这一线程在他的观点以及黑人学者，黑人企业和n'digo中都显而易见，这在他的著作中显而易见 - 教育是真正创造机会的原因。新利18备用

金说：“没有阅读，您就无法拥有建筑生产力或安全性，因此我们发现自己处于所有对我们领域感兴趣的黑人男孩都在监狱中的情况。”金说，教授被监禁的年轻男子的计划是建筑行业，因此他们在离开时既安全又有生产力，现在与他开始为工作人员奋斗时一样重要。

His youngest son, Timothy King, has taken his father’s teachings to heart by opening Urban Prep Academy, a network of public charter schools in Chicago. Its three schools in the Bronzeville, Englewood and Near West Side communities serve more than 1,500 young men—the first such all-male charter schools in the U.S.

Paul King says more must be done in construction to attract young Black men. “We don’t have enough Black young men that are aware of the opportunities in construction,” Paul King says. “There has to be a major educational effort as well as a recruitment effort.”

他还意识到，今天承包商面临的缺乏劳动是数十年前排除政策所构成的一个问题。

保罗·金（Paul King）仍然活跃于业务，今天是综合建筑咨询公司的主要业务开发商兼雨毒者，在那里他对合作伙伴，总裁兼首席执行官林恩·迪克森（Lynn Dixon）和校长道格·康沃尔（Doug Conover）表示赞赏。

他说：“我爱我的伴侣，他们允许我走到那里和展览船。”

他曾在芝加哥的罗斯福大学演讲，并在今年晚些时候制作第二本书。他和他的妻子Loann仍然住在这座城市。
Writing in the foreword to “Reflections on Affirmative Action in Construction,” Gwendolyn Keita Robinson, executive director of Chicago’s DuSable Museum of African-American History, said, “There are not many people who get to see their ideas come to fruition or their lifetime struggles rewarded. Paul King is one of those people, although he would be the first to say ‘a luta continua’—the struggle continues.”