(Percussion of a marching band) [Narrator] On the morning of October 22, 2021, as widespread mask wearing and vaccinations for the Covid-19 pandemic made it possible for people to assemble in open spaces, a who's who of Maryland leaders gathered on a parking lot at the center of Morgan State University's campus.

They were there for the dedication of the historically Black university's newest building.

Constructed at a cost of $88 million, the five-story, 141,000 square foot structure was to be home to an array of student services, many of which had been housed for years in a dilapidated building on the edge of the sprawling Baltimore school.

Among the speakers who gathered for the dedication ceremony were Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, Congressman Kweisi Mfume, and Dr. David Wilson, Morgan State University's president.

But at the center of attention that day was Calvin Tyler, Jr., a little-known 79-year-old retiree and college dropout who shied away from the spotlight as much as the other speakers seemed to bask in it.

The new building-- the Calvin and Tina Tyler Hall - bore the names of Tyler and his wife of 60 years.

This recognition was given in appreciation of a $20 million gift that the couple gave to the university, which Calvin Tyler attended, briefly, in the 1960s.

I'm Calvin Tyler Jr., and this is my story.

[Inspiring piano music and synth] ♪ ♪ [Narrator] Calvin Tyler Jr. was born September 13, 1942, in Baltimore, a city with a long history of racial turmoil.

By 1940, Blacks were 20 percent of the city's 860,000 residents, but - because of housing segregation - occupied just two percent of Baltimore's land mass.

In 1942, 94 percent of the city's Black workers were employed in menial or unskilled jobs.

And that year, thousands of Black people marched on the state capital to protest police mistreatment of Blacks in Baltimore.

It was against this backdrop that the life of Calvin Tyler Jr., the first of three sons born to Anita and Calvin Tyler, Sr., began to unfold.

Calvin Tyler's story is not just a tale of personal success, it is the story of a Black man who escaped the clutches of the Jim Crow era and quietly found in his improbable victory a way to help many others break free of its lingering vestiges.

Synthesizer plays "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" (Crowd chatter) (Bat hits the ball and the crowd cheers) [Narrator] Calvin Tyler was five months short of his fourth birthday when his father took him to Baltimore's Municipal Stadium on the afternoon of April 28, 1946, to see Jackie Robinson.

A year away from breaking Major League Baseball's color barrier as a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Robinson had been assigned to the Dodgers' top farm team, the Montreal Royals.

(Cheering) Branch Rickey, the Dodgers' owner, wanted Robinson to spend a year in baseball's Minor League to prepare him for what he would encounter on and off - the playing field the following year as Major League Baseball's first Black player.

[Jackie Robinson] Oh, I knew the importance of the occasion.

I remember Mr. Rickey saying to me that I couldn't fight back, and I wondered whether or not I was going to be able to do this.

I knew that this was bigger than any one individual and I would have to do whatever I possibly could to control myself.

[Narrator] Baltimore was a good test.

With a long history of segregation and racial unrest, the city was branded the northernmost outpost of the Jim Crow South, by Johns Hopkins University historian Carroll Kakel.

(Cheering) The first game between the Montreal Royals and Baltimore Orioles drew 25,000 people - more than triple the average attendance at the Orioles' home games in 1946.

Forty percent of the people who filed into the stadium that day were Black.

[Calvin Tyler, Jr.] What I remember most about that was not just Jackie Robinson but the pride I saw in my father's face.

I mean, it was just incredible, and...I'll never forget that, and from that day on Jackie Robinson was one of my true heroes and a person I tried to emulate in the way I carried myself.

[William C. Rhoden] Baseball was the American dream.

It epitomized the American dream.

And it was a dream that Black people didn't have access to.

When that day came, Branch Rickey had this experiment.

There was going to be this one Black man who was going to play Major League baseball.

It's hard to understand what that meant to Black people throughout the United States.

It was like a version of the Emancipation Proclamation.

It was such an emotional thing, because every at bat - we were at bat.

Every ball hit, we were catching it.

Everything he did, our dreams rested on his shoulders.

That was priceless, when he said that he looked at his father, and when he saw the pride of his father's face.

Probably, in that moment, it became ordained that Jackie Robinson would become Calvin Tyler's hero.

[Narrator] Tyler's other hero was his father.

Calvin Tyler, Sr., was born in Baltimore in 1920.

He quit school after the ninth grade, following the death of his father-- a porter with the B&O Railroad, to help his mother make ends meet.

His first son - Calvin Jr. - was born in 1942, shortly after he married Anita Howell, whose family migrated to Baltimore from North Carolina during the Great Depression.

Two years later, at the height of World War II, Tyler was drafted into the U.S. Navy and served 17 months as a cook, one of the few jobs the racially segregated Navy allowed Black sailors to perform.

He was honorably discharged in 1945.

Two months later, Calvin Tyler Sr., landed a job as a janitor with the local telephone company.

But his salary wasn't enough to provide for his wife and family, which would soon grow to include three young sons, Calvin, Jr., Robert and Reginald.

So, for a time the Tyler's moved in with the boys' maternal grandparents, who lived in a narrow, three-story rowhouse in the heart of Baltimore's Black belt.

But this arrangement did not sit well with the elder Tyler.

In 1947, Calvin Tyler Sr., packed up his family and moved them to Cherry Hill, a newly built, government-funded enclave on the southern edge of Baltimore.

The Tyler family took up residence in Cherry Hill on Spelman Road, a long stretch of two-story public housing units that had the regimented look of military barracks.

These homes rented for $14 to $37 a month, depending on the family's size and income.

It was while living in Cherry Hill that Tyler had his first encounter with Baltimore's deep-seeded racism.

As the Christmas holiday approached, Tyler's mother took him and Reginald, his youngest brother, to the city's bustling downtown shopping district.

The central corridor of this area was Howard Street, which was home to Baltimore's four largest department stores.

[Calvin Tyler, Jr.] What I recall, we were walking past the Christmas display in the windows at Stewart's and they had a beautiful, beautiful model train layout and trains going around a little village with lights and there were kids surrounding, looking at the trains and I remember bolting towards the store door.

And my mom, who loved me more than anything in the world, grabbed my arm as tight as I have ever had her grab my arm and said: "Stop Calvin, you can't go in there."

I tell my white friends - you know, this wasn't Bull Connor and dogs trying to stop me from going in there.

It wasn't George Wallace blocking the door.

It was my mom...the person who loved me more than anyone in the world.

And looking back, I don't blame my mom.

She was trying to protect me.

[Narrator] The big department stores that lined Howard Street were the most visible evidence of Baltimore's connection to the Jim Crow South.

Black people who shopped in these stores were required to enter through basement doors, were not allowed to eat at the lunch counters, and everything they purchased was stamped "Final Sale - No Return."

The Tyler family's stay in Cherry Hill was short-lived.

Even with government subsidized housing, the Tyler's struggled financially.

So, for a time, Tyler's family moved back in with his grandparents.

Eventually, Calvin Tyler, Sr., put his family into a small, two-story house that he rented on Claymont Avenue, a few blocks away from his in-laws.

Not long after moving onto Claymont Avenue, 10-year-old Tyler got his first job.

[Tyler] I sold the Afro American Newspaper in Baltimore.

[Narrator] Established in 1892, the Afro was the paper of record for Baltimore's Black community.

It chronicled virtually every aspect of Black life in Maryland's largest city, where one in four of the city's 950,000 residents were Black in 1950.

The Afro also was the source of badly needed income for many of the city's Black youngsters the paper relied upon to sell it in Baltimore's Black neighborhoods.

[Francis "Toni" Draper] It was steady income.

It was hard work.

It was respectable work.

But it was also to teach them about entrepreneurship, good business principles, to motivate them, to keep them doing something productive, and to help with the family's income.

[Tyler] So, I had to pay for the papers first and...uh, I bought 20 papers on Tuesday and Friday.

I had about five regular customers and the other 15 papers I had to sell.

And I had to sell 'em...um, before dark.

I had to be home before dark.

So, I got the papers after school and would sell them on the street, and...mainly on Pennsylvania Avenue, in Baltimore.

[Slow jazzy horn and piano music] ♪ ♪ [Tyler] Pennsylvania Avenue in those days was where all the Black culture was, all the Black nightclubs, all the Black stores, theaters, just about everything in the African American community was on Pennsylvania Avenue.

And it was a great place to sell newspapers because there was always a lot of people there.

[Narrator] Tyler wasn't satisfied with the money he made from the sale of just 20 newspapers.

He wanted to earn more.

And to do that, he needed a bicycle.

With a bike, he could get to more parts of Pennsylvania Avenue and the nearby streets to sell his newspapers - and still get home before dark, as his mother insisted.

It took Tyler a year to save enough money to buy an American Flyer bicycle.

And, for a time, things worked just as he planned.

[Tyler] Unfortunately, there were some older kids who actually saw my bicycle and liked it.

And they took it from me.

(Laughs) And I remember one of the kids saying, "If you say anything about this to anybody, we know your parents, and we'll kill 'em."

And...uh...so, I returned home, and my mom asked where was my bike?

And I told her I lost it.

[Narrator] The Tyler family left that neighborhood in 1955, a year after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the desegregation of the nation's public schools.

That year his parents bought the family's first home, a rowhouse on Mondawmin Avenue, in a West Baltimore neighborhood where white flight was making way for an emerging Black middle class.

Just 17 days after the Supreme Court ordered public schools throughout the nation to desegregate, Baltimore became the first public school system below the Mason-Dixon line to voluntarily comply.

The school board's quick acceptance of the high court's ruling opened the way for Calvin Tyler to attend Garrison Junior High, whose student body, until then, had been all-white, and mostly Jewish.

Under Baltimore's segregated school system, Garrison Junior High was one of the pathways white students used to get into Baltimore City College, which, despite its misleading name, was one of the city's most prestigious public high schools.

With the legal prohibition against him attending that school removed, Tyler wanted to take advantage of that pathway.

And why not?

He had excelled academically at every school he attended before the desegregation order.

And at Garrison Junior High School, Tyler continued to be a standout student.

In September 1956, Calvin Tyler entered 9th grade at Baltimore City College.

He was one of the first Black students to be admitted into the prestigious, all-boys high school, whose four-story Gothic building, which was topped with a 150 foot tower, made it a city landmark that people called "the castle on the hill."

For Tyler's parents - neither of whom finished high school - their oldest son's admission to City College was a matter of great pride and hope.

They were proud of his academic accomplishments and hopeful that a degree from one of Baltimore's top high schools would open doors for their son that had been closed to so many Black people of their generation.

Tyler was determined not to disappoint his parents.

He worked hard and got good grades at City College.

But life for him was by no means "all work and no play."

He loved to dance - and he was good at it.

So good that he once won a dance contest at the New Albert Hall, a club in Baltimore's Black entertainment district that opened its doors to teenagers on Friday nights.

("Do You Want to Dance" plays) But it was at the nearby "colored" YWCA that Tyler made his best moves on a dance floor.

The Madison Avenue "YW," as people in the Black community called it, was a safe haven for young Black women.

It was listed in the Green Book, the guide for Black travelers who wanted a friendly place to shelter.

And local Black women knew it as a safe place for them to gather and meet young Black men.

It was there, at the "Colored YW," that Calvin Tyler first saw Ernestine White, a shy 16-year-old girl from the east side of Baltimore.

[Tyler] I met Tina at a sock hop, at the Madison Avenue YWCA.

A sock hop involved teenagers going to a dance, all of the girls were on one side of the room and the boys were on the other side of the room.

And when you heard a song that you liked and thought you would want to dance with a girl, a boy would have to walk across and ask the young lady if she would dance.

And that's how I met Tina.

I walked across, terrifying (Laughs), but I walked across and I asked her, and she said, "Yes."

("Let's Stay Together" plays) [Narrator] A year later, on June 13, 1960, Tina was Calvin's date at the Baltimore City College senior prom.

The young men all wore white dinner jackets and black cummerbunds - and the young women wore formal gowns.

Calvin Tyler and Tina White were a strikingly attractive couple.

The following year, Calvin Tyler, Jr. and Ernestine White were married in an East Baltimore rowhouse.

(Inspiring piano music) [Tyler] 1961, on June 25th, we were married; and expecting (laughter).

We didn't have a big church wedding.

Tina and I were married at her father's home on Milton Avenue in Baltimore.

We were married in the living room.

Before the ceremony Tina's father...and he's...um, a little, short guy...he stopped me in the hall as I was headed to the living room, and he said to me...looking up at me, he was a short guy...he was looking up at me and said, "Listen you little jitterbug, you'd better take good care of my little baby."

(Inspiring piano and harp music) [Narrator] Tyler was determined to do just that.

By the time their first son, who they named Calvin, was born in December of 1961, Tyler had moved his family into an apartment in a Baltimore suburb - and was working several jobs to provide for his family.

For a while, he took some classes at what was then called "Morgan State College," and at the Community College of Baltimore.

In the early days of their marriage, Tina found work as a bank teller.

Tyler worked as a short-order cook, a parking lot attendant at a downtown department store, and as a clerk and delivery man for Cheslock's, a local jewelry store.

But with the birth of Kevin, their second son, in May 1963, Tyler soon ran out of the time and money he needed to finish his college education.

[Tyler] Before we bought our first home, I worked at a Lord Baltimore Press, a printing company in East Baltimore.

And I worked there during the day.

And I also, for three months, worked that full-time job and...um... a graveyard shift at the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.

So, I worked two full-time jobs for three months to save up enough money so we could buy our first home.

(Calm piano music) [Narrator] The house was a 980-square foot, two-bedroom home on a quiet street near Baltimore's western border.

The price was $12,500.

[Tyler] So, I needed about $2,400 to put down on it.

And I saved up enough.

[Narrator] But when the Tyler's went to settlement, they encountered an unforeseen problem.

[Tyler] It's pretty funny because it took all of the money we had to come up with the down payment.

And we're sitting in this fancy boardroom with these bankers talking about this mortgage.

At the end of our discussion, the bankers mention, "Well we've got to also have... take care of closing costs."

And it was the first time in my life, I had ever heard of that term.

"Closing costs, what is that?"

So anyway, I think that was an additional $160 that we needed to come up with, but we had no more money.

So, we sat and talked with these bankers...it had to be for two hours...to figure out how we were going to come up with closing costs.

And finally, it was their idea, we took a second mortgage out on $160.

(laughs) But we got our first home.

(Calm piano music) [Narrator] With a house payment and a second mortgage, Tyler was anxious to make more money.

In 1963, when an entry-level supervisor's position became available at the Lord Baltimore Press, he applied for the job.

A short time later, Tyler learned that a white co-worker with less experience had been given the position.

When Tyler asked his boss why he was passed over, his supervisor gave him an answer that changed the course of his life.

[Tyler] I said, "You know, I've been around longer.

I've done a good job.

I've always been here on time.

Why did Ron get that job and not me?"

And he said to me straight up, "Well, Calvin, I think that Ron has a knack for that job."

And I remember going home very depressed about that and saying to myself, you know, "Where do you get this knack?"

(Wry laughter) And to me, it just smelled of flat-out racism.

From that day on, I started looking for another job.

[Narrator] A few months later, on June 6, 1964, Tyler saw a want ad in the Baltimore Evening Sun that got his attention.

United Parcel Service, a package delivery company that was about to begin operating in Baltimore, was looking for 10 drivers and the starting pay was a lot more than he was making at the Lord Baltimore Press.

[Tyler] The thing that intrigued me most, they said that as a company: "We promote from within.

And all of our management start in entry-level jobs and then move up."

And I wanted to have an opportunity to go into management.

[Narrator] The policy of promoting from within was one of the building blocks that Jim Casey, the company's founder, used to transform the small messenger service he launched in 1907 into the world's largest package delivery service.

In 1927, UPS - in a "share the wealth" move that was designed to build loyalty - started giving its managers an opportunity to own stock in the privately held company.

Casey wanted UPS managers to think of themselves as part owners of the delivery service.

But to take advantage of these policies Tyler first had to land a job in UPS' new operation in Baltimore.

[Tyler] I saw the ad in the paper.

I had to go to a job interview.

And when I got to the interview, they gave us some tests, assessment tests.

And one of the personnel guys told me that I aced the test and they were very interested in hiring me as a driver.

"There's only one last thing you'll need to do, and that's to pass our road test.

You can drive a stick shift, can't you?"

And I immediately said, "Yes, of course."

And I had never driven a stick shift in my life, but I had a week to prepare.

And so, I went back to Hutzlers, the department store where I parked cars, and asked them, if I could work a week parking cars.

And I worked with the other valets to make sure that any customer that came in, in a stick shift, I would take it.

And I would drive their stick shift to the top of the roof and practice shifting gears.

And a week of doing that, I was pretty comfortable with a stick shift.

So, when I finally had my road test with UPS, I aced the road test.

[Narrator] Ironically, Tyler started working for UPS on June 20, 1964 - 13 days before President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed into law a landmark civil rights bill that banned racial discrimination in employment and public accommodations.

The nation was changing for the better and Tyler would soon find himself riding a wave of that change - and he would also feel the pull of its undercurrents.

[Tyler] Well, there were only 20 drivers and I was the only Black.

It took me about a year of driving before I was asked to cover some of the routes of drivers who were absent.

[Narrator] Tyler's willingness to learn the routes of every driver and often work up to 20 hours of overtime every week got his boss' attention.

[Tyler] Well, I think my manager thought that I was very valuable.

I mean, to have someone at a moment's notice that can run any route in the building was a real asset.

Well, I know that they all knew that I wanted to be in management, and within two years, 1966, that I was offered an opportunity to become a supervisor.

[Narrator] Two years later, at the age of 26, Tyler was promoted again.

With each move he got an increase in salary.

But what got his attention more than the cash increase was the stock he earned.

Maybe it was naiveté, or vision, but Tyler quickly came to see himself as a real stakeholder in UPS - to see himself as few Black people in the Baltimore of his youth could ever envision - as a Black person who was part owner of a business that employed them.

[Tyler] The founder of UPS always said that he didn't want the management people to be hired hands.

He wanted them to be partners and owners in the business.

[Julianne Malveaux] The great economist Lauren Hill said, "It's not what you cop, it's what you keep."

So, your income is what you cop.

Your wealth is what you keep.

And you can have a very high you know, high income and not be a high net worth individual, if you spend it all.

[Tyler] I never sold a share in 34 years with UPS.

I received stock.

I purchased stock.

But, I never sold a single share.

(Country guitar music) [Narrator] In 1970, Tyler was promoted to division manager and sent to Houston to run part of the company's operation in that Texas city.

He was just 27.

[Tyler] That was a big deal.

UPS didn't have a lot of Black division managers then.

There may have been a few around the country but...um, it was also a big deal because I was 27 years old.

[Narrator] By 1972, there was clear evidence that the America into which Calvin Tyler was born was changing.

But, as he discovered shortly after moving to Texas, it wasn't changing fast enough.

[Tyler] While, I was a division manager in Houston, got a couple of special assignments that I went on for UPS.

One of them, I was sent to Dallas to head up a team of auditors while we audited the Dallas operation.

My job was...I think I had five guys reporting to me, and my job, as team leader, was to gather all the results of our audit and review it with the district manager the next morning.

The audit went well, we completed it, it's an all-day thing.

We start early in the morning, about 7:00 AM, and we audit the drivers, the drivers' appearance, the paperwork, the service numbers.

One of the things a team leader is expected to do, because it's a long day, is to take the audit team out to dinner that night.

And so that night, I asked the people, because they're all from Dallas, to choose a restaurant, and I wanted to take them out to dinner.

And they did.

They chose a restaurant in downtown Dallas.

We went in as a team, got seated, and...uh... we were only there for about 15 or 20 minutes.

The manager and one of the waiters came over, and the waiter said, "Mr. Tyler, we will get you whatever you want, but we're refusing to serve the rest of your party."

(Country guitar music) [Narrator] So, in what seems to have been a clever misinterpretation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act's prohibition against racial discrimination in places of public accommodation, the restaurant manager thought he could avoid serving a Black man by refusing to serve the white men who came to the restaurant with him.

The ploy worked.

Tyler and his team left the restaurant without being served.

But, like Jackie Robinson, Tyler understood the pitfalls of the trail he was blazing - and saw no gain to be achieved by complaining about what happened to him in the Dallas restaurant.

[Tyler] After that incident, I don't think I said anything to anybody about it.

It was just one of those things that I had to overcome.

[Narrator] In Houston, Tyler's boss was a guy named Dick Goodrich.

Tyler remembers him as a mentor who had close ties to top leaders at UPS - someone who shared Tyler's quiet advocacy for diversity within the company.

Somebody, it seems, was listening to them.

Not long after Tyler returned to Dallas, Goodrich sent him to Chicago for a meeting with two senior leaders of UPS - George Lamb, the company's vice president of operations, and UPS President, Jim McLaughlin - who were both based in New York, met with Tyler in a hotel near Chicago's O'Hare Airport.

(Rocking blues guitar music) [Tyler] I didn't think that it was bad.

(Laughs) I think bad news would have come from my boss.

So, you know...

I didn't know what to expect.

But I didn't think it was going to be bad news.

And when I finally met with Jim McLaughlin and George Lamb did most of the talking.

And he said that they had watched my performance on a number of jobs, for a number of years, and they thought that I had the ability and the capability to be a district manager.

And they...um...they wanted to offer me the job of district manager of the state of Nebraska.

That's a huge job.

The way UPS was set up in 1973, and even before then, was that the operations were decentralized, and the districts...we had 60 districts then... the districts were set up so that whoever was the district manager was like the CEO of his business.

The district manager was responsible for hiring, firing, revenue, customers, finances, the fleet automobiles, the district manager was responsible for the entire operation.

He had the final say in his district.

I talked to my wife, Tina, and I said, "Tina, I'm being offered a promotion to become district manager of Nebraska, and we would be moving to Omaha, Nebraska."

And the phone dropped, and I was wondering what was going on, but I later found out-- in our garage in Houston, I had put a map of the United States on the wall in the garage, so that I could teach our two kids about geography, and the reason why we lived in Maryland and now we live in Texas.

I later found out that the phone was dropped because Tina went out to the garage and she was looking on the map for Omaha, Nebraska.

And she came back about 10 minutes later, because I was holding the phone.

And she says, "I can't find Omaha, Nebraska."

I said, "That's okay, Tina.

We'll find it."

(laughs) (Emotional piano music) [Narrator] It was 1973 and Tyler had been with UPS just nine years.

He had not yet reached his 31st birthday - and with this promotion, he was being given control of all of UPS' operations in the state of Nebraska - a multi-million-dollar business.

Ten years earlier 200,000 people took a historic trek to Washington, D.C., to hear the Rev.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and other civil rights activists, challenge the nation to bring about an era of racial equality.

But as The New York Times reported in a 1973 series about how far America had come since Dr. King gave his spellbinding, "I Have a Dream" speech, the nation's movement towards racial equality had been painfully slow.

And that's what made Calvin Tyler Jr.'s achievement so remarkable.

Just 10 years after the March on Washington, 30-year-old Calvin Tyler, Jr. became the highest-ranking Black manager at one of the nation's largest and fastest growing businesses - a company whose leaders believed Tyler had "a knack" for management.

[Narrator] Shortly after arriving in Nebraska, Tyler attended the UPS National Management Conference in Key Biscayne, Florida, in May 1973.

It was a gathering of the company's district managers.

As one of its newest members, Tyler was given an opportunity to address the group.

(Dance music with horns) [Tyler] From the very beginning, I knew that UPS was the place where I wanted to spend the rest of my working days.

For only at UPS could a poor kid from Baltimore be offered so many challenges and so many opportunities.

I'm grateful for the opportunity I've received, and as a Black, I'm proud of being a partner in a company where opportunity exists for Blacks with brown blood.

[Narrator] "Brown blood" was a reference to the company's official color.

Afterwards, Tyler posed for a picture with the other district managers, and Jim Casey, UPS' aging founder.

Tyler was the only Black person in the photograph.

[Tyler] That's when I realized that, like Jackie Robinson, I had to be a trailblazer at UPS.

[Narrator] There was another important transition that took place around the time that Tyler moved to Nebraska.

He began to pay close attention to his growing financial position.

[Tyler] But one of things I did while I was in Nebraska was go to the bank and borrow $100,000 to buy UPS stock.

Yeah, we have a program at UPS which was called "hypothecation."

And through that program, you could go to the bank and get a loan at very low interest, if you put up the UPS stock you owned as collateral.

And so, as district manager, I dealt directly with the president of the bank.

I walked into the bank, not as just a 30-year-old Black man - I walked into the bank as district manager of Nebraska.

And that carried a lot of weight with the bank.

[Enthusiastic jazz music with lead horn] [Malveaux] When you allow the bank to hold your asset as collateral, the bank isn't going to lose anything.

You're not going anywhere...

The way that he constructed that, this is absolutely brilliant.

[Narrator] Managing money was something Tyler learned from his father - and was forced to master during the early years of his marriage.

[Tyler] I think a lot of my view of finances started with my parents.

My Dad...um...kept a budget ledger.

My Dad hated debt.

And I think that growing up in that household started me early on - even when Tina and I first got married, and I was working at Cheslock's, I had a budget.

And when I was working at Cheslock's, in the storeroom and delivering jewelry, I was making $45 a week.

Take home was about $37.60.

And I...and Tina and I and our one child were living off of $37.60 take home.

And I had a budget.

I could lay it out for you right now.

It was $15 a week for rent, $10 a week for food, $5 a week for gas, and the balance was everything else.

And I think, I saved $5 a week.

So, I hope that adds up.

(Laughs) But the important thing was I had a budget and it was a budget that I wrote down.

It wasn't a budget in mind.

I kept a ledger.

And from there, I learned what it means to have a balance sheet.

And I think, it's important for young people to learn that early.

I think, I got it in my 20s.

But at least by the age of 30, I kept a balance sheet, which meant that I calculated all of my assets, the value of all of my assets.

I subtracted from those assets any debt I had, and that bottom line was my net worth.

[Narrator] And Tyler's net worth was enhanced by the increases in salary and stock he received with each new assignment - assignments that pushed him up the management ladder.

And as he moved through the upper levels of the UPS management team, Tyler quietly tried to make a way for other Black people to advance.

[Jim Winestock] What I appreciated about Cal is that Cal knew how to support you without...and knew how to advocate for you without carrying you, or without worrying about you, or without calling you, or without, you know, patting you on the back or pushing you along.

[Myron Gray] When you know that your career is moving very fast compared to everyone else, you quickly learn that someone is behind your ascension within the organization.

That person who was behind the meteoric rise in my career was Cal Tyler.

[Winestock] You know, I can't imagine the pressure that Cal felt, not only to do his job, but to set the pace for those who were following him.

He advocated for managers and supported managers who did a good job...uh, but he did it without a whole lot of fanfare.

[Gray] Cal Tyler is a selfless person.

He's an individual who rose to a position of authority, but was able to look around him and understand that he shouldn't be the only person who had a seat at the table.

[Narrator] Ultimately, the support Tyler gave other UPS employees helped produce this iconic picture of Tyler and three of the men who followed him in the job of Senior Vice President for U.S. Operations in UPS - Myron Gray, Jim Winestock, and Cal Darden.

Tyler moved nine times during his 34-year career with UPS.

And with each move he was given a more demanding assignment.

After two years in Nebraska, Tyler was sent to New Jersey, to an operation that was plagued with union problems.

[Tyler] New Jersey was tough.

It was a very aggressive union there.

Um....we had a number of battles with the union, uh, but UPS...um...had a philosophy back then that no one should get a real big job at UPS unless they worked in one of the tougher operations.

[Narrator] In 1991, Tyler was elected to the UPS Board of Directors.

He was the first Black UPS employee to become a member of the company's management committee.

As Tyler handled these and other assignments, his salary, and the amount of stock he earned from UPS, grew rapidly - and so too did his wealth.

From his first UPS paycheck, in 1964, to the last, in 1999, Tyler's annual salary grew by roughly 20,000 percent.

And his UPS stock rose in value from $20,000 in 1973, to more than $40 million in 1999, the year he retired.

While, covering a labor dispute in 1997 between UPS and the union that represented its drivers, The Wall Street Journal reported that a majority of the privately-owned company's stock was held by its current and retired managers.

Among its six top managers, the newspaper pointed out, Tyler was the company's biggest stockholder.

He had significantly more stock than the others, including UPS chairman and CEO.

In the years following his retirement, Tyler's wealth grew even more as the value of his once private UPS stock grew when the company went public; and as he diversified his stock portfolio.

And it was this growing wealth that Calvin Tyler was determined to put to good use.

[Tyler] I was thinking about financial security for me and my family.

And at some point, particularly since I was accumulating a lot of stock in UPS, I thought about the whole, um, idea of financial independence.

And one day being in a position where...I don't need this job or any other job.

And I thought about that, and I started, um, making little notes and...and making projections of what I would have to get to as far as stock in the company to be what I would call financially independent.

[Narrator] If the Calvin Tyler story ended here, it would be a remarkable tale of perseverance and success.

Few Black men who came of age during the heyday of the Jim Crow era have accomplished so much with so little fanfare.

But as Tyler climbed the ladder of corporate success inside UPS, he found ways to help disadvantaged people outside the company, too.

He served on the boards of the National Urban League, the United Way of Atlanta, and the Boulé, the nation's oldest, Black Greek-letter fraternity.

He donated large sums of money to a hospital in Las Vegas and to a local charity in San Francisco.

Tyler and his wife created the Tina and Calvin Tyler Family Foundation, and for nearly 20 years, Tyler served on the board of the Baltimore-based, multi-billion-dollar Annie E. Casey Foundation that UPS founder Jim Casey created, and named, in honor of his mother.

[Lisa Williams] Cal Tyler served as the first person of color on the board of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the organization where I am now the president.

Our tenures didn't overlap, but I know that he was a great contributor to making sure that the foundation really fulfilled its mission, and that it focused on good data and evidence to support all children, and particularly children of color.

[Rhoden] This is something that Jackie Robinson said and it became his mantra, and it became Calvin's too.

"A life is not important, except in the impact it has on other lives."

That's something that Jackie Robinson lived by, and that's something that informed Calvin Tyler's life.

[Narrator] On June 14, 2017, Tyler walked onto the grass of a newly constructed playground in an East Baltimore neighborhood that was beginning to show signs of recovery from years of blight, crime, and neglect.

Built by a consortium of non-profit organizations that included the Casey Foundation, the playground - which was just a short walk from the small Milton Avenue rowhouse where Tyler married his high school sweetheart 56 years earlier - was named in Tyler's honor.

[Michael L. Eskew] When the Annie E. Casey Foundation trustees were first told of the 82 acre site in East Baltimore adjacent to Johns Hopkins Hospital, we were told it was a piece of land in poor condition with many vacant house.

The plan was to bring in biotech facilities around the hospital, and to add stores, and commercial activities, and to rebuild, and modernize the housing.

Cal was familiar with the neighborhood from his youth.

He was adamant that the project had to be more than improved land use, gentrification, and commercial development, that it had to be about the people that lived here.

To win our support, it had to be a neighborhood where residents could raise their families, send their kids to school, and where kids could play and learn to thrive.

Cal was the conscience of the board of trustees.

[Narrator] Helping poor and disadvantaged children - especially those in the city of his youth - is something that Tyler has pursued with a quiet, but unrelenting passion.

In 2002, he turned his attention to Morgan State University, the hometown school he never forgot.

That year he and his wife created a scholarship fund at Morgan with a gift of $500,000.

Three years later, they made another half-million dollar donation to that fund.

In 2008, they added one million dollars to it.

In 2016, the Tyler's gave Morgan three million to pay the tuition for needy students from Baltimore who, like Calvin Tyler, could not complete their studies at Morgan without significant financial help.

Then, in 2020, they increased to twenty million dollars their commitment to the Calvin and Tina Tyler Endowed Scholarship fund and urged Morgan to give as many full scholarships as possible to deserving students from across the nation.

Their donation is the single largest gift ever given to a historically Black higher education institution by a former student.

And it was the cause for the celebration that took place at Morgan State University on the morning of October 22, 2021.

(Morgan State University Marching Band) [Rep. Kweisi Mfume] Some people talk, and some people do.

And long before the humongous donation to this institution, long before that, Calvin and Tina were making contributions to Morgan to get students through...to pay the rest of their bills...to make sure they had books.

(Applause) Don't lose sight of that.

[Governor Larry Hogan] Their unparalleled generosity, and their deep commitment to education and to the city of Baltimore, have made today possible.

[Mayor Brandon Scott] For the work and the investment that you've made, not just into this building, not just into these wonderful young people that we see today, but for all that you have done over the years, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

[Dr. David K. Wilson] It is important for this university to acknowledge your long standing support and your generosity in a way that is more deserving of your great legacy here at Morgan beyond the ballroom.

And so, the resources that you provide will further the vital work that we do in expanding opportunities here, so that every student at Morgan will not be sent home because they don't have the financial resources; and they will be able to walk across the stage, get that Morgan sheepskin, and be able to dance on the world stage (applause), as we say, with the best of them - anyplace, anytime, anywhere.

[Announcer] It is now my privilege and honor to welcome to the podium our dear friend and benefactor, Calvin Tyler.

(applause) [Tyler] You know, Tina and I really appreciate all of the remarks, all of the comments, all of the recognition, but in some ways, we feel a little bit uncomfortable being recognized for doing what's right.

(light applause) Tina and I have had over the years a great deal of financial success by investing in the stock market, but I'm here to tell the Tyler Scholars that no investment we've ever made means more to us than our investment in you.

(applause) When you're blessed, and we've been blessed, you should try to find a way to give back and help others.

And that's what Tina and I have tried to do for the last 20 years.

Tyler Scholars - whatever you decide to do, don't be afraid to move outside your comfort zone to take on new and different challenges.

Be bold and be brave.

Whatever you decide to do, don't let anyone try to tell you what you can or cannot do.

That's up to you.

Be bold and be brave.

Whatever you decide to do in life, please believe in yourself.

You will leave Morgan with a great education and God given talents.

Please believe in yourself.

Be bold and be brave.

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