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Donald Trump’s Start as a Businessman

Microsoft Word – Bank of Trump.doc

In 1968, Donald Trump began his business career in his father’s real estate development company, E. Trump & Son, which, among other interests, owned middle-class rental housing outer boroughs. He worked to revitalize Swifton Village apartment complex Cincinnati, Ohio, which elder Trump bought 1964. The management was sued for racial discrimination 1969 which was  “quietly settled at Fred Trump’s direction.” It was sold in 1972.

When his father Fred Trump became chairman of board 1971;  Donald Trump was promoted to president and renamed the company The Trump Organization. and expanded it from Queens and Brooklyn into Manhattan. The company built or renovated skyscrapers, hotels, casinos, and golf courses.  In 1973,  the Justice Department contended in a lawsuit that the company systematically screened out people based on race, not low income as Trumps stated. Under the agreement in 1975, the Trumps made no admission of wrongdoing and agreed to make the Urban League the intermediary for qualified minority applicants. Trump’s attorney at the time, Roy Cohn, responded to attacks with forceful counterattacks; Trump later emulated Cohn’s style.

NYC Walks Blog 78 Donald Trump’s Start as a Businessman © 2019 by Dr. Philip Ernest Schoenberg

 

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