Clifton R. Wharton Jr., Who Broke Racial Barriers, Is Dead at 98

He was the first African American to become president of a large white university, C.E.O. of a major corporation and deputy secretary of state. When Clifton R. Wharton Jr. was appointed president of Michigan State University in 1969, he became the first African American in the nation to be named to head a major, predominantly white university. For Dr. Wharton, it was just one of many firsts. He was the first Black chancellor of the State University of New York. He was the first African American to run a Fortune 500 corporation, and the first to become deputy secretary of state, serving in the Clinton administration. His remarkable firsts often went unheralded, earning him the nickname “the quiet pioneer.” But Dr. Wharton, who died of cancer at 98 on Saturday in Manhattan, made clear that, though race was important, it was not the driving force in his long life of achievement. “I’m a man first, an American second and a Black man third,” he told The New York Times after he was named president of Michigan State at age 43. “I do feel my appointment at Michigan is an important symbolic occasion, but that is not the criterion of it....