John D. Rockefeller Jr.

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John Davison Rockefeller Jr. (January 29, 1874 – May 11, 1960) was a prominent member of the Rockefeller family.

He was the sole son of Standard Oil co-founder John D. Rockefeller and the father of the five well-known Rockefeller brothers.

He is often referred to as "Junior" in biographies to distinguish him from his father, "Senior" in his biographies.

Nelson Rockefeller, the 41st Vice President of the United States; Winthrop Rockefeller, the 37th Governor of Arkansas; and banker David Rockefeller were among his sons.

Early life

Rockefeller was John Davison Rockefeller Sr.'s fifth and last child, as well as schoolteacher Laura Celestia "Cettie" Spelman. Elizabeth (Bessie), Alice (who died as an infant), Alta, and Edith were his four older sisters. He lived in his father's mansion on West 54th Street and the Browning School, a tutor center, on West 55th Street, where he and other children of the family's associates were enrolled. Standard Oil was co-founded by John Sr. and uncle William Avery Rockefeller Jr.

Originally, he had intended to attend Yale University, but William Rainey Harper, president of the University of Chicago, had others encourage him to attend the Baptist-oriented Brown University. Nicknamed "Johnny Rock" by his roommates, he taught a Bible class and was elected junior class president. He stood out as different from other wealthy men's sons'. He was extremely careful with money.

He graduated with the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1897 after taking nearly a dozen courses in the social sciences, including a study of Karl Marx's Das Kapital. He joined Alpha Delta Phi fraternity and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

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Business career

Rockefeller began working in the newly formed family office in 26 Broadway, where he became a director of Standard Oil after graduating from Brown. He later became a director at J. P. Morgan's U.S. Steel company, which had been established in 1901. After the Hearst media empire discovered a corruption case involving John Dustin Archbold (the successor to Senior as head of Standard Oil) and two prominent members of Congress, junior resigned from both businesses in an attempt to "purify" his continuing philanthropy from commercial and financial interests.

The United Mine Workers of America declared a strike against the Colorado Fuel and Iron (CF&I) company in September 1913, the first strike in what would become the Colorado Coalfield War. Junior held a majority interest in CF&I (40% of the company's stock) and sat on the board as an absentee director. The Ludlow Massacre occurred in April 1914, after a long period of industrial strife, at a tent camp occupied by striking miners. At least 20 men, women, and children were killed in the slaughter. This was followed by nine days of brutality between miners and the Colorado National Guard. Though he did not order the attack that sparked the protests, there are reports that junior was to blame for the brutality, the terrible working conditions, death rate, and no paid dead work that required reaching dead ends meet. Junior was summoned to appear before the Commission on Industrial Relations in January 1915. Several commentators criticized Rockefeller for ordering the assassination of the victims. "But remember Ludlow!" Margaret Sanger wrote an attack piece in her magazine The Woman Rebel." Remember the men, women, and children who were sacrificed in order that John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s noble work of charity and philanthropy as a promoter of the Christian faith."

He was being advised by William Lyon Mackenzie King and Ivy Lee, a pioneer public relations specialist. Lee warned that the Rockefellers were losing public confidence and devised a plan that Junior followed to restore it. To overcome his timidity, travel to Colorado to speak with the miners and their families, investigate the health of the factories, attend social functions, and especially listen closely at the grievances. This was novel advice and drew widespread media attention, opening the way to end the conflict and presenting a more humanized interpretation of the Rockefellers. Mackenzie King said that Rockefeller's testimony was the turning point in Junior's life, restoring the brand of the family name; still, a new period of industrial relations in the United States was initiated.

During the Great Depression, he was involved in the design, planning, and construction of the Rockefeller Center, a large office complex in midtown Manhattan, and as a result, he became one of New York City's top real estate owners. He was instrumental in attracting top blue-chip companies as tenants, including GE and its then affiliates RCA, NBC, and RKO, as well as Standard Oil of New Jersey (now ExxonMobil), Associated Press, Time Inc, and Chase National Bank branches (now JP Morgan Chase).

On its completion in 1933, the family office, of which he was in charge, was shifted from 26 Broadway to the 56th floor of the historic 30 Rockefeller Plaza. The office officially became "Rockefeller Family and Associates" (and moreformally, "Room 5600").

Junior received about 10% of the Equitable Trust Company's shares from his father in 1921, making him the bank's top shareholder. Equitable and Chase National Bank joined in 1930, making Chase the world's largest bank at the time. Despite the fact that his stockholding was reduced to around 4% following the merger, he was still the largest shareholder in what was known as "the Rockefeller bank." The family owned around 1% of the bank's shares as late as the 1960s, by the time his son David became the bank's president.

Rockefeller founded the Dunbar National Bank in Harlem in the late 1920s. The financial institution was located within the Paul Laurence Dunbar Apartments on 2824 Eighth Street in the East, serving mainly African-American clients. It was unusual among New York City financial companies in that it employed African Americans as both tellers, clerks, and bookkeepers as well as in key managerial positions. However, the bank folded after only a few years of existence.

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