Barrier Breaker : 86-Year-Old Businessman Became a Success During an Era When Doors Were Closed to Blacks in L.A.

I don’t like a person that tries to be more than what they really are. I’m just plain old every day. An old man told me years ago, ‘Birds fly high, but they got to come down to eat.’

--Arvant M. Benjamin

Arvant M. Benjamin rose from his easy chair and offered his hand for a shake.

“Hello,” he said stiffly. “Benjamin . . . Arvant.”

It was a fitting and formal introduction for a formal man, a man who has spent more than 80 of his 86 years in the City of Angels, who has watched this city grow from a horse-and-buggy town of fields and dusty dirt roads to a shimmering metropolis of freeways, fast cars and steel-and-glass skyscrapers.

During this time, Benjamin has not become famous, although he mingled with many celebrities during his days as a trumpet player. He has not changed the history books, although he has certainly witnessed history. He has lived quietly and without fanfare.

Yet the native of Pensacola, Fla., is unusual all the same: a black man who became successful in business at a time when doors were often closed to blacks. And he has a few things to say about it.

Largest Black Business

Decades ago, Benjamin’s Two-Hour Cleaning & Laundry--he started it in his back yard with a washing machine and some makeshift plumbing--was said to be the largest business owned by any black person in Los Angeles. He was a partner in a South-Central Los Angeles mortuary, the Corner-Johnson Funeral Home. He helped fund scholarships for black youngsters, and he was a founding director of what is now Family Savings & Loan, an institution he says was established because “the banks didn’t want to lend black people the money to buy property.”

Sixty-three years ago, Benjamin borrowed $1,200 to buy his first house. Today, he may be one of the few people in Los Angeles whose bank automatic teller card reads, “Customer Since 1925.”

Said Los Angeles City Councilman Gilbert Lindsay, who is a year older than Benjamin: “I’ve known him over 60 years. He was a successful businessman in the days when success was not afforded everybody. He made contributions to a lot of worthy organizations in the South-Central area. He was not a cheap-type person, but he would spend his money or give his money when he thought it helped one that needed it.”

Said Benjamin, plainly: “I’m a simple man. I don’t want no notoriety. Whatever I have, the Lord can take it away from me.”

Yet far more interesting than Benjamin’s successes are his stories. He played the role of raconteur one recent afternoon, seated on the floral couch in the living room of the well-kept home he owns with his brother on 47th Street.

He recalled riding his horse along Wilshire Boulevard before it was paved. He recalled his schoolmate, the young Factor boy, whose father, Max, ran a little storefront shop at the corner of 12th Street and Central Avenue where he sold “cosmetics and powder.”

He recalled waking up early on Saturday mornings to walk to Burbank, where he would “go to steal fruit.” And he recalled, with wistful laughter, the days when blacks were banned from a public swimming pool in Pasadena--except on Tuesdays, when the pool was cleaned.

“I learned how to swim at Washington Boulevard and La Brea Avenue. It was nothing but hills and two water holes. The colored boys get there first, they get the best one. The white boys get there first, they get the best one.”

His mother wanted him to learn the piano, but he thought the piano was for sissies. He wanted to learn the trumpet, and he did. His love affair with that instrument lasted for decades.

He has not played in a long time, not even held one in years. His lips are no good anymore, he explains, his false teeth not suited to blowing a horn. But with a little coaxing, his brother, Eugene, dug into some far corner of the house and dredged up Benjamin’s instrument--a gold-plated, hand-engraved, they-don’t-make-’em-like-that-anymore trumpet with mother-of-pearl valves.

Benjamin took the trumpet out of its weathered black case, ran his fingers over it and cradled it like a baby. Unable to resist, he lifted it to his lips and blew one soft note. “That was G,” he said, and then he shook his head and put the horn down in his lap.

While a student at Jefferson High School--he did not go to college--he wanted to take a music-appreciation course. The teachers wanted him to take blacksmithing or carpentry; they thought a “colored” child had no use for music. But he prevailed, and later he taught music.

During his playing days in the 1920s and ‘30s, he called the trumpet his “starvation box.” He loved it, but he knew he would never make any money with it.

“I got a job working and played music at night. I worked at the Los Angeles Desk Co. I drove a truck for $21 a week. . . . In those days, Negroes didn’t get any vacation. I asked about vacation, and he said, ‘You get half a day on Saturday during July and August, Christmas and Thanksgiving.’ Four holidays. That was vacation.

“I could take the truck home at night and I would tell him that I was going to take my family out for a ride on Sunday, in case he would see me on the highway. I imagine he would say, ‘There go my boy, he’s taking his family out for a ride.’ And I would take people to the beach, 50 cents a head, $2 a head to go to Tijuana. And I used to give my grandfather 50 cents so when he got on the truck, he would get in line first and hand me the 50 cents I give him so people would say, ‘He’s even charging his own grandfather!’ ”

Benjamin was always a saver, Eugene says. Everybody else would spend their dimes, but not Arvant. He would save.

In business, Benjamin says, he believed in self-reliance and in having enough money to pay your debts. He had credit cards, but he never used them. He bought cars with cash, made investments and bought property. He knew when a product was good, and when he wanted to make a purchase, he didn’t “need no two-hour lunch” to figure it out.

“I remember a time a young man came to my business and told me he was a graduate in public relations and he could increase my business a hundred times if I would pay him $250 a month. I told him that if I don’t have enough sense to increase my business myself then I don’t have any business being in business.”

After 40 years, Benjamin retired in May from the Board of Directors of Family Savings & Loan. He takes it easy these days, spending his time with his companion of more than 30 years, Ruth Munson. (Benjamin was married once, but has no children.) Though he now resides primarily at Munson’s home in Compton, he is quick to note that he does not “go for shacking up” and did not move there until after her children were married and she was afraid to remain in the house alone. When they were courting, he ate dinner there but never spent the night.

“I’m from the old school,” he declared.

He enjoys traveling--he and Munson have been all over the world, throughout Europe, Africa, the Middle East, the Orient and Australia. Recently, he took a cruise from Hong Kong to Japan and China. He recalled with some sense of satisfaction that a member of the Vanderbilt family was on board the same ship and that “you don’t go by your color. You go by your class and your stateroom.”

Of all the places he has visited, however, he likes the United States the best.

With all he has seen and done these last 86 years, Benjamin is not above dispensing a little advice when asked.

“I always did work. To get any place in this world you have to work. . . . Go out and get it yourself. That’s what you have to do.”