Harlan Crow

Harlan Crow was born in Dallas, the third son of Margaret Doggett Crow and real estate developer Trammell Crow. He has four brothers and one sister. Unlike his siblings, he attended high school at the Randolph-Macon Academy in Front Royal, Virginia.[1] He later attended Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, before he transferred to the University of Texas where he received a BBA.

He worked as a leasing agent for Trammell Crow Houston Industrial from 1974 to 1978 and managed the Dallas Office Building development operations of Trammell Crow Company from 1978 to 1986. He then served as President of the Wyndham Hotel Company from 1986 to 1988. He assumed responsibility for Crow Holdings in 1988. He currently serves as Chairman [2] and was formerly its Chief Executive Officer.[3]

He is a member of the founding committee of the 501(c)4 organization Club for Growth, and has served on the board of the American Enterprise Institute since 1996.[4][5][6] He has donated almost $5 million to Republican campaigns and conservative groups. He is a close friend of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, a relationship that has made Thomas the center of a debate about questionable judicial ethics.[7] For several years Thomas has received luxury trips from Crow. These gifts have not been disclosed, which is in violation of the disclosure law.[8] Crow is a member of the all-male Bohemian Club, and as early as 1997 has hosted Thomas as a guest at the group's annual summer encampment, the Bohemian Grove.[9][7] He is also a friend and former business partner of the publisher Wick Allison.[10]

In 2009, Crow mounted an unsuccessful multimillion-dollar campaign to block the establishment of a publicly owned convention hotel in Dallas.[11] That same year, he provided $500,000 to Liberty Central, which was established by Virginia Thomas, the wife of Justice Thomas. At that time, the sources of Liberty Central's startup funds were not publicly disclosed.[12] Crow has given over $10 million in publicly disclosed political contributions. How much he has given to groups that do not disclose donors - so-called dark money - is not known. “I don’t disclose what I’m not required to disclose,” Crow told the NY Times.[13]

In 2023, ProPublica reported that Crow has given several gifts to Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, including a $19,000 bible that belonged to Frederick Douglass. Crow gave Thomas a portrait of the justice and his wife, according to the painter, Sharif Tarabay. Crow’s foundation also gave $105,000 to the Yale Law School, Thomas’s alma mater, for the “Justice Thomas Portrait Fund,” tax filings show. Justice Thomas has accepted week-long luxury trips, including regular international and domestic private jet travel, superyacht island-hopping, and private resort stays.[14] A law passed after the Watergate scandal requires justices, judges, members of Congress, and federal officials to disclose most gifts.[15] These rules were updated in March 2023 to become stricter, but still maintain that gifts deemed to be of a "personal nature" do not have to be reported.[16]

His Dallas residence includes his private library, comprising a significant collection of historical documents from the likes of Ponce de Leon, Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, George Washington, Robert E. Lee and all the signers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. Crow is also a noted art collector, owning original paintings by Peale, Renoir and Monet, as well as the likes of Winston Churchill and Dwight Eisenhower. All told, 8,500 books and manuscripts are housed here.[17] Additional items include Napoleon's writing desk and Duke of Wellington's sword from 1815.

His backyard garden is home to sculptures of fallen leaders and Communist icons, including Vladimir Lenin, Josef Stalin, Fidel Castro, Karl Marx, Hosni Mubarak, Josip Broz Tito, Nicolae Ceausescu, Walter Ulbricht, Gavrilo Princip, Bela Kun and Che Guevara. Crow acquired these former public monuments after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc.[18]

He and his second wife, Kathy, have three children.[1][19] Kathy Crow earned a bachelor's degree from Princeton University in 1989,[20] and an MBA from the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University (SMU), and is a member of the SMU board of trustees, and a member of the executive boards of the Cox School of Business and the Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development.[21] In 2014, Harlan and Katherine Raymond Crow committed $5 million towards building the Kathy Crow Commons at SMU.[22]

His mother, Margaret Crow, survived the sinking of the SS Athenia, the first British ship sunk by Nazi Germany during World War II.[18]

• Crow's biography Archived July 27, 2011, at the Wayback Machine at the Crow Holdings website