Lawrence O. Graham ’83

Larry died Feb. 19, 2021, in his sleep at his home in Chappaqua, N.Y.

Larry came to Princeton from White Plains (N.Y.) High School. He majored in English, was a member of Tower, chair of the Upperclass Choice Committee, and an active member of the Third World Center and Whig-Clio. In 1988 he earned a law degree from Harvard Law School.

The center of Larry’s legacy was his writing involving the nature of race, privilege, and discrimination in American society. In 1992 he took employment as a busboy at the Greenwich Country Club — the “only way that a black man like me” could gain admission — and wrote about the discrimination he experienced there in a widely discussed New York magazine cover story. Subsequently, Larry became a noted commentator on matters of race and privilege. His books include the Our Kind of People: Inside America’s Black Upper Class, The Senator and the Socialite, Proversity, and A Member of the Club.

Larry also formed a corporate-diversity consulting group, ran for Congress, was chairman of the Horace Mann School’s board of trustees, and was a partner at Cuddy & Feder. At the time of his death, he was adapting Our Kind of People into a television series. 

Larry is survived by his wife, Pamela Thomas-Graham; two sons, Gordon and Harrison; a daughter, Lindsey; and brother Richard. The class extends its deepest condolences at the loss of this engaged, prominent, and caring class member.