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Roy Roberts is a businessman who had a long, distinguished career at General Motors before retiring as group vice president, North American Vehicle Sales, Service and Marketing in 2000.[1] According to a profile of him on the Bloomberg Businessweek website, he is currently a Managing Director at Reliant Equity Investors.[2]

An August 1988 article published in The New York Times stated Roberts was the second African-American vice-president at GM. (Otis Smith was the first.)[3] For much of his career he was the highest-ranking African-American in the automobile industry.[1]

Roberts was born in 1939 and began his professional career working on an assembly line at Lear Siegler while attending Western Michigan University.[1] He has served as an officer in the NAACP, among numerous other volunteer and civic activities.[2]

Roberts unwillingly found himself at the center of a controversial event at the Bloomfield Hills Golf Club in 1994 when the club refused to admit him after he had applied for membership. Though the club claimed its actions were not based on Robert's race, G.M.'s president, John F. Smith Jr., and its chief financial officer, J. Michael Losh, chose to resign their memberships with the club because Roberts had been barred from joining.[4]


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