Illustration · An imagined trustees’ meeting room in New York before a board meeting in the 1940s: a long table set at each place with paper and a pencil, water down the middle, and the minute book open at the chairman’s place at the far end. Not drawn from a photograph.

Class A and Class B

AA’s trustees started with its nonalcoholic friends in the majority, in case the drunks got drunk, and it was 1971 before the alcoholics outnumbered them.

“Who, then, would look after the money if all the drunks got drunk?”

Bill W., on the board of 1938 · AA Grapevine, November 1951

Just in case

In 1938, when the book project needed money, AA’s first friends set up the Alcoholic Foundation. Its trust agreement said the nonalcoholic trustees must always outnumber the alcoholic ones by one. (The barest majority, in By the Carload, tells how the Foundation began.) None of the alcoholics on the new board, Bill W. explained later, were sure they could stay sober. The rule was there “Just in case!”

The worry was sound. “Drunkenness on the part of an alcoholic Trustee meant immediate resignation,” Bill wrote, and the first New York member on the board soon got drunk. Arthur S.’s timeline, drawn from the office’s archives, names him as Bill R., whose story is in the Big Book as “A Business Man’s Recovery,” and calls him the board’s first chairman. He was gone by February 1939. The next chairman, by the same account, was Harry B., who wrote “A Different Slant.” He drank too, and was replaced that December.

From then on the chair went to a nonalcoholic. Robert Shaw, a lawyer, took it at the end of 1939, by Arthur S.’s account. Leonard V. Harrison held it through what Bill called the “very uncertain years of AA’s adolescence,” and Bernard Smith, a corporation lawyer, from 1951 to 1956. Dr. John L. Norris, the chief physician at Eastman Kodak, chaired the board from 1961 to 1978.

The AA members stayed few. In 1944 the Grapevine counted four nonalcoholic trustees and three AA members, two of them from the New York area and one from Akron. The board grew to fifteen by 1949, and by the early 1950s the nonalcoholics were called Class A trustees and the AA members Class B. Bill was grateful for the friends. “Because of their detached position,” he wrote in 1951, “they have often shown better judgment than we mercurial and prejudiced alcoholics.”

In 1955 the General Service Conference recommended a plan for choosing AA trustees by area, which Arthur S. calls the first move toward regions. At first an area trustee was chosen from a single state. In 1962 the Conference enlarged the board to nineteen, and in 1963 the first regional trustees were elected, from six regions of the United States. In January 1962, too, Mary B. had become the first alcoholic woman on the board.

Bill wanted more than that: alcoholics in the majority. It took him ten years, by Arthur S.’s count. The Conference turned him down more than once, and agreed in 1966 to seven nonalcoholics and fourteen AA members. (Mr. Anonymous, in Number One Man, tells that fight.) The first full board of twenty-one sat in 1971. Until then, Box 4-5-9 noted, “the Board had always had a majority of nonalcoholics.”

Listen Class A and Class B About 1 minute

Who sat on the board

The majority by one

The trust agreement kept AA’s nonalcoholic friends in the majority. Here is the board at seven moments, one square for each trustee, by the count each source gives.

Where a source gives only the size of the board, not its split, it’s left out. The board of 1950 is named in full in the Foundation’s own pamphlet.

Class A: nonalcoholic friends
Class B: AA members

1938
Five trustees: three friends, two AA members. Bill W., 1957
1944
Seven: four friends, among them a woman, Mrs. Livingston Farrand, and three AA members. AA Grapevine, June 1944
1950
Fifteen: eight friends, Frank Amos, A. LeRoy Chipman, Leonard V. Harrison, Austin MacCormick, Fulton Oursler, Dr. William D. Silkworth, Bernard Smith and Dr. Leonard V. Strong, and seven AA members, Jonas A., Tom B., Tom K., Dick S., Dr. Bob S., Bill W. and Tom Y. Harrison was the president. The Alcoholic Foundation, a pamphlet of 1950
1956
Fifteen: eight friends, seven AA members. In 1959 a plan for nine and nine fell short of the two-thirds it needed, 46 to 36. The Conferences of 1956 and 1959
1962
Nineteen: ten friends, nine AA members, with trustees from the regions to come. AA Grapevine, July 1962; Box 4-5-9, 1964
1971
Twenty-one: seven friends, fourteen AA members, the ratio agreed in 1966. Box 4-5-9, October–November 1971
2024
Twenty-two: seven friends, fifteen AA members. AA’s notice of Class A trustee vacancies, June 2024

Turned around

For thirty-three years the friends outnumbered the drunks. Since 1971 the AA members have held at least two seats on the board for every one of theirs.

For a closer look

Go deeper

Who was on the first board, and when; who has held the chair; and the women on the board.

The first board

The accounts agree on the rule and differ on the names and the dates. In the order they were set down:

1939. Seven trustees, three of them AA members and four “well-known business and professional men,” who must always be a majority. The Big Book’s draft, in an appendix on the Foundation.
1951. The trust agreement was drawn in May 1938, and its nonalcoholic trustees were Willard Richardson, Dr. Leonard V. Strong, Frank Amos and A. LeRoy Chipman. Bill W., in the Grapevine. (Arthur S. puts Chipman on an advisory committee, not the board.)
1957. Five trustees: Richardson, Amos and Strong, with Dr. Bob and a New York member, who soon got drunk and was replaced. “It was May, 1938.” Bill W., in AA Comes of Age.
2009. The trust was set up on August 5, 1938, with Richardson, Amos and the lawyer John E. F. Wood as its nonalcoholics, Dr. Bob and Bill R. as its alcoholics. Strong and Harry B. joined in January 1939, making seven. Arthur S.’s timeline, from the office’s archives.

Who held the chair

Arthur S. says the board’s titles were president and vice president until 1955, though the Grapevine called Leonard V. Harrison its chairman in 1944. The chairs through the founders’ time:

1938–1939. Bill R., then Harry B., both AA members, both gone after drinking again. Arthur S.’s timeline; Bob P.’s history of 1985 calls Bill R. only a trustee.
1939. Robert Shaw, a lawyer, the first nonalcoholic in the chair, from December 27. Arthur S.
1940s–1950. Leonard V. Harrison, who joined the board in 1941. Bob P.; Bill W.
1951–1956. Bernard Smith, a lawyer, “one of the principal architects of our General Service Conference,” Bill wrote when he died. The Grapevine, October 1970.
1956–1961. Harrison again, by Box 4-5-9 in 1964. Bob P. says he came back as a trustee but not as chairman.
1961–1978. Dr. John L. Norris, “Dr. Jack.” Box 4-5-9, 1964 and 1977.

AA’s publications called it a custom: in 1989 and again in 2004, its newsletter for professionals wrote that the board still chose a nonalcoholic trustee as its chair. In 2001 Elaine McDowell became the first woman and the first African American to hold the post. The custom ended in 2024.

Women on the board

The accounts don’t agree on the first woman trustee. In the order they were set down:

1944. The Grapevine’s first issue lists four nonalcoholic trustees, among them “Mrs. Livingston Farrand,” the “Distinguished wife of Livingston Farrand, former President of Cornell University.”
1983. When Joan K. Jackson was elected that spring, AA’s newsletter for professionals called her “the first nonalcoholic woman in A.A. history to serve on the board,” and Box 4-5-9 said that until then all the nonalcoholic trustees had been men.
2009. Arthur S.’s timeline, drawn from the office’s archives, says Margaret Farrand became the first woman on the board in November 1941, and that Bernard Smith took her place in June 1944.

If Arthur S.’s Margaret Farrand is the Grapevine’s Mrs. Livingston Farrand, the first woman trustee was a nonalcoholic, some forty years before Joan K. Jackson. The first alcoholic woman on the board, Mary B., was seated in January 1962, by Arthur S.’s account.

Sources

The Language of the Heart. AA Grapevine, 1988. Bill W., “Meet the Nonalcoholic Trustees” (November 1951) and “Bernard B. Smith” (October 1970), first printed in the AA Grapevine (the trust agreement of May 1938 and the book project; the rule and why; the trustees in 1951; Smith and the Conference).
Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age. Alcoholics Anonymous Publishing, 1957. “Service: The Third Legacy” (the first board; immediate resignation; Robert Shaw, Howard and Bert; Harrison and Smith) and, in later printings, “Landmarks in A.A. History” (May 1938; regional trustees in 1963; the ratio in 1966).
The Big Book’s prepublication draft (loan copy), 1939, appendix “The Alcoholic Foundation” (seven trustees, four and three).
Alcoholics Anonymous (the Big Book), first edition, 1939. “A Business Man’s Recovery” and “A Different Slant.”
Arthur S., A Narrative Timeline of AA History, 2009 (the trust of August 5, 1938; Bill R. and Harry B.; Robert Shaw; Margaret Farrand; Mary B.; the president’s title until 1955; the plan of 1955; the ten-year campaign).
Bob P., “The General Service Board,” chapter 2 of his manuscript history of AA, 1985, unpublished, at silkworth.net (Bill R. as trustee; Harrison).
“General Service Conference Faces Full Agenda,” AA Grapevine, January 1953 (Class A and Class B trustees); “AA in Action,” AA Grapevine, July 1959 (46 to 36); “Conference Report,” AA Grapevine, July 1962 (nineteen trustees).
“Do You Know?,” AA Grapevine, June 1944, the first issue (the seven trustees of 1944; Mrs. Livingston Farrand; Harrison as chairman).
Box 4-5-9, July–August 1964 (the chairs; ten and nine), October–November 1971 (the first board of twenty-one), June–July 1977 (Dr. Norris stepping down) and June–July 1983 (the nonalcoholic trustees until then all men).
About AA, AA’s newsletter for professionals: Fall 1983 (Joan K. Jackson), Fall 1989 and Summer 2004 (the custom of a nonalcoholic chair), Summer 2001 (Elaine McDowell).
AA World Services, the general manager’s letter of June 26, 2024 (the first Class B chair), and the notice of Class A trustee vacancies of June 18, 2024 (twenty-two trustees).
The Alcoholic Foundation (pamphlet). The Alcoholic Foundation, New York, 1950. “What the Alcoholic Foundation is” and the list of trustees, from photographs of a copy by Recovery Collectibles.