Line art illustration of a speaker, June Wilson, standing in front of a seated audience, holding a microphone and gesturing with a lit candle. The speaker wears glasses and a name badge, and the background features tall windows and light blue watercolor shading. The image conveys a moment of engaged public speaking or presentation within a formal or professional setting.

04: We looked directly at how we cause harm and what we can repair.We take responsibility for repairing harm.

When Ellen Friedman stepped down in 2021, June Wilson became executive director. Compton Foundation had already begun to conceptualize spending the whole endowment as an essential process of returning wealth, a symbolic step toward repairing past and present-day harms that were done to Black and Indigenous people in the creation of that wealth.

With June’s purposeful leadership, we acknowledged that we, the individual decision makers comprising the foundation’s board and staff, were perpetuating harm by continuing to control this resource within a grossly inequitable system.

To understand that inequity, let’s go back to the beginning. Compton Foundation founder Dorothy Danforth was the daughter of Adda De Villars Bush Danforth and William H. Danforth. She was heir to a fortune derived from her parents’ company, originally called Purina Mills. When Dorothy was 21, she married 25-year-old Randolph Compton and took his last name — that’s why the foundation is called “Compton.” The initial money was hers, and her husband’s occupation was managing investments to grow wealth for their family and for other wealth holders.

Dorothy and Randolph had four children. The youngest — John Parker — attended a prestigious boarding school in Switzerland, where he reportedly became an avid skier. When he returned to the States, he enrolled in Princeton University. Shortly after beginning his studies, he pivoted and enlisted to serve in World War II. He joined the ski troops enthusiastically as part of the 10th Mountain Division, 86th Infantry Regiment. Two months after his twentieth birthday, he was killed in action by a sniper during a battle to free Iola, Italy, from German occupation.

Dig lightly into what happened after this formative tragedy (it’s really why the foundation exists at all) and you’ll find traces of good works, along with stories that might even put the family a bit ahead of its time in terms of social ideals. Dorothy is credited with a “commitment to youth education, racial justice and public service.” She served on the board of trustees for the historically Black Morehouse College. Early foundation grants included racial justice organizations such as the NAACP. But this selective narrative ignores both the origins of Dorothy’s inheritance and the dynamics by which that wealth, along with wealth from the family’s investment business led by her husband Randolph, continued to grow.

Board Chair Vanessa Compton Davenport lays out two versions of the family story explicitly. She grew up hearing version one. She came to recognize version two over time and with hard self-reflection. In your family, which one would you choose?

Story Version Comparison Tool Instructions

Drag the divider left and right to read the two stories.

  • Click the center line or left/right arrow icon and drag it to slide between versions (touch or tap on mobile)
  • Accessibility: Tab key will focus on the slider, then use left/right arrow keys to adjust

Version One

The Compton Foundation has honorable origins.

The wealth in the endowment came from the wild success of Purina Mills, later known as Ralston Purina, a company run with integrity that created products to advance people’s health and wellbeing. It was not generated from exploiting enslaved people, mistreating workers or harming the environment.

Wiliam H. Danforth, the company’s visionary leader and Dorothy Compton’s father, was a good and noble man. He built the company from a humble feed store into an international force that was valued at $10 billion when it merged with Nestlé in 2001.

William was known for promoting a path to success through self-reliance and “clean living.” In 1931 he penned a motivational book, I Dare You!, to inspire others by his amazing fourfold habit of “daring” to do and be his best.

  • Physical: “I built a body that has equaled the strongest boys in that class and has outlived and outlasted most of them.”
  • Social: “I’ve found that smiles attract smiles. Sure, there are a lot of mornings I don’t feel like smiling, but I smile anyway and smiles keep coming my way.”
  • Mental: “To me, this means reading one book a week. In the back of each book I make notes as I read. Through the years this counts up.”
  • Religious: “This four-square plan of living has become my religion. It is part of the Christian way of life.”

Version Two

The Compton Foundation’s origins are troubling.

Funds in the endowment came from the wild success of Purina Mills. Company founder William H. Danforth’s ambitions were enabled by a deeply discriminatory system of fourfold harms that continue to cascade across generations.

  • Land stolen from the Osage and other Indigenous people was purchased cheaply to grow soy, oats and corn. Low cropland costs supported high profits and generated funds for reinvestment.
  • Workers who processed these crops labored in segregated factories for low wages, with few worker protections and no benefits.
  • William’s “inspirational philosophies” were an extension of his fervent Ralstonism, an explicitly eugenicist project that advocated for White domination in the U.S. through deportation, colonial expansion, and development of a new, pure White race through healthy foods and exercise. Ralstonism’s founder endorsed a line of Purina Mills cereals. This philosophy, friendship and marketing partnership were so integral to the business that Danforth changed the company’s name to Ralston Purina in 1902.
  • Ralston Purina expanded beyond animal feed into commodity crops and processed grocery products, creating a self-perpetuating profit cycle that both benefited from and contributed to concentrated agribusiness and industrial livestock production.

We don’t imagine for a moment that Compton Foundation is alone in grappling with a problematic origin story, or even with family divisions over which story is “the right one” to tell. But revealing the whole story has been crucial, providing an essential awareness that informs what we do today. The foundation’s wealth was made possible by colonization, the theft and commodification of Indigenous land, the creation of “race” and “whiteness” as constructs justifying enslavement, dehumanization of labor, disparate opportunities, and four generations of self-perpetuating investments in a discriminatory financial system.

We know we are not responsible for specific wrongs committed by our founders or ancestors. Like most long-standing foundations, our organizational values and behaviors have improved over time. But getting better on pace with the world is not enough. As individuals, as stewards of resources handed down to our care, we are responsible for doing whatever we can to repair past harms, challenge the systems that perpetuate them, and return wealth that was stolen in so many ways.

Read Next: 05:
We kept moving through challenging work and difficult relationships. Necessary work gets messy. We’re here for it.