Who We Are

Reginald F. Lewis

Baltimore's Greatest Son (December 7, 1942 – January 19, 1993)

Reginald Francis “Reggie” Lewis was a lawyer, businessman, author, and philanthropist. Born in Baltimore to working-class parents, he grew up in East Baltimore. Lewis attended Virginia State University and was their first student admitted to Harvard Law School. He earned a law degree from Harvard in 1968.

In 1983, Lewis founded TLC Group, L.P., a leveraged buyout firm, through which he gained ownership of McCall Pattern Company. In 1987, Lewis orchestrated the $985 million leveraged buyout of the Beatrice Foods Company, at the time the largest leveraged buyout of a company ever led by a minority owner. By January 1993, Beatrice Foods was worth approximately $2.5 billion on the strength of its international dairy and food distribution system. It was the first time a Black-owned business appeared on the Fortune 500 list of America’s largest businesses.

Lewis donated over $10 million in his lifetime. In 1992, he donated $3 million to Harvard Law School—the largest gift any individual had given to Harvard Law School at the time—resulting in the establishment of the Reginald F. Lewis International Law Center.

Lewis died from brain cancer on January 19, 1993, at age 50 at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Maryland governor William Donald Schaefer declared: “For a state to achieve greatness, it must have heroes. Reginald F. Lewis is one of our heroes.”