Fletcher, Arthur A.

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Arthur A. Fletcher
1924–2005

Political consultant, civil rights activist

Astaunch Republican and a civil rights activist, Arthur Fletcher advised four Republican presidents and for three years headed the U.S. Civil Rights Commis-sion. He had a keen interest in education, personally providing financial support for the legal case Brown v. Board of Education in Topeka, Kansas, where he wanted to desegregate public schools. His interest in the rights and benefits of blacks was demonstrated in many ways throughout his lifetime, including his support of the Civil Rights Act of 1991. He established the framework for affirmative action; as a result, he was labeled by some as the "father of affirmative action." In so doing, he created opportunities for millions of women and minorities. He often spoke publicly on civil rights and affirmative action. Because of his views, at times, he was at odds both with his political party and with his race.

Arthur Allen Fletcher was born on December 22, 1924, in a black neighborhood in Phoenix, Arizona. He was the son of Andrew A. and Edna Miller Fletcher. At the time of his birth, his father (according to some sources his stepfather) was a career military man stationed at Camp Huachuca while serving in the all-black cavalry regiment in the U.S. Army. During his youth the family moved frequently, living in poor neighborhoods in Arizona, California, Oklahoma, and Kansas. While living in the Watts district of Los Angeles, Fletcher became a gang leader by age thirteen. Since the family moved around, young Fletcher attended seventeen different schools by the time he was in the eighth grade. Although Edna Fletcher held college degrees in education and nursing, employment for blacks at that time was difficult to find; consequently, she worked as a live-in maid. This arrangement meant that Arthur Fletcher lived with various families, including American Indians and Mexican Americans.

Early on, Fletcher considered becoming a minister. He developed an interest in civil rights when he was in the seventh grade, after hearing educator and presidential adviser Mary McLeod Bethune speak. According to Lottie L. Joiner for Crisis magazine, she told students in Fletcher's school to "always carry a brief for Black folks." He followed her advice and became an activist while in high school. In 1943 Fletcher organized his first civil rights protest at the Junction City Junior/Senior High School, boycotting the yearbook because it placed photographs of black students at the back of the book. He also distinguished himself on the school's football team as a halfback and defensive end. To build up their fire before playing against white teams during that racially-charged time, Fletcher and his black teammates read accounts of black lynchings.

Chronology

1924: Born in Phoenix, Arizona on December 22
1943: Organizes his first civil rights protest; receives B.A. from Washburn
1954: Becomes first black player for Baltimore Colts football team; begins political career in Kansas; becomes assistant public relations director, Kansas Highway Commission; becomes vice-chair of Kansas State Republican Central Committee
1958: Moves to California and works for Aerojet-General Corporation in Sacramento
1960: Joins Nixon-Lodge campaign
1962: Makes bid for California State Assembly; chairs advisory committee on civil rights, California Republican Assembly; becomes member of Alameda County Central Committee
1967: Accepts post with the Nanford atomic energy facility, Washington State
1968–69: Elected to Pasco (Washington) City Council; becomes special assistant to Washington's governor Daniel J. Evans; becomes assistant secretary of wage and labor standards, Nixon administration
1969: Establishes Affirmative Action Plan
1972: Become executive director of the United Negro College Fund
1973–89: Serves as president of the consulting firm, Arthur A. Fletcher and Associates
1978: Runs for mayor of Washington, D.C.
1990–93: Serves as chair of the Civil Rights Commission
2005: Dies in Washington, D.C. on July 12

Fletcher married at age eighteen, and at age nineteen, after graduating from high school in Junction City, Kansas, he enlisted in the U.S. Army during World War II and served in a tank division. He was wounded while serving in Europe under General George C. Patton and was awarded a Purple Heart. He was discharged in 1945. On his return to the states, Fletcher had football scholarship offers from Northwestern, Iowa, and Indiana universities. He had a brief stay at Indiana but the lack of suitable housing in Bloomington led him to accept a scholarship offer from Washburn University.

Fletcher enrolled in Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas and studied under the G. I. Bill of Rights and with a scholarship from the university. Fletcher excelled in football, earning Little All-American honors; he was the sixth leading rusher in small college teams through the country. A political science and sociology major, he also gained practical experience by working part-time in a state agency in Kansas as well as for legislative committees. In 1950, Fletcher graduated from the university with a bachelor of arts degree.

In 1950, Fletcher joined the Los Angeles Rams as defensive end. The Rams soon had their quota of five blacks on their team and in 1954 sold Fletcher to the Baltimore Colts, making him the Colts' first African American team member. From there he moved to the Hamilton (Ontario) Tiger Cats of the Canadian Football League. By now he had five children, so the meager salary of $5,100 was insufficient for his needs. Fletcher returned to Kansas with the hope of coaching high school football. Unsuccessful, he supported his family by working long hours in menial jobs for several years. He applied for a management trainee program with Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company in Topeka, but was turned down; instead, he was hired on in a factory job with the company. Fletcher decided to enhance his education and in 1953–54 did postgraduate work in economics and education at Kansas State University. Much later he took a law degree from Chicago's LaSalle Extension University. Still later, according to one source, he earned a Ph.D. degree in education.

Begins Political Career

Fletcher began his political career in Kansas in 1954 by working in the area of public relations on Lieutenant Governor Fred Hall's successful campaign for governor. Hall was a liberal Republican who needed Fletcher to push his candidacy in the black community. The 17,000 votes that Fletcher delivered were said to be enough to ensure Hall's victory. Hall rewarded him by giving him a post overseeing building and maintenance of the highway system. Thus, Fletcher took his first position in state government (1954–57), as assistant public relations director for the Kansas Highway Commission. There was a boom in highway construction at that time, and Fletcher positioned himself well for the benefits that he reaped for his race. He learned the details of awarding and administering lucrative government contracts and in so doing, he encouraged African American business leaders to bid for the contracts. In his view, this action was the cornerstone for aiding minorities. Some local white business leaders attacked him for working to steer highway contracts to minorities. He was legislative liaison officer and chaired a commission on racial problems which, again, gave him an opportunity to help address racial needs. He also worked for the Kansas State Republican Central Committee as vice-chairman from 1954 to 1956. Although in the 1950s blacks in Kansas were predominantly Democratic, Fletcher was a Republican who began to fight for better opportunities for blacks. He instituted policies that Republican administrations followed.

In Kansas, Fletcher became a staunch defender of education and demonstrated a keen interest in school desegregation. While waiting for his reward from Hall, Fletcher taught in a rural elementary school and was appalled by the gross inadequacies in the black schools. With his own funds, he helped to finance the lawsuit against Topeka's Board of Education, the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education, which aimed to desegregate the public schools in Topeka.

After Hall lost his bid for reelection in the 1956 primaries, the administration that followed abolished Fletcher's post. To support himself and his family, Fletcher opened a used-car business in Topeka. Some claim that his involvement in the school desegregation case led city officials who disagreed with his actions to force him out of business. The determined Fletcher moved on to become assistant football coach at his alma mater, Washburn University. The appointment made him the university's first black staff member and in the national view, the first black in the country to coach at a predominantly white academic institution.

Fletcher and his family followed Fred Hall to Sacramento, California, in late 1958. There Fletcher became management control coordinator for Aerojet-General Corporation and lived in a white neighborhood. Racial prejudice was alive and well in his neighborhood, as rocks were thrown into the family's home. The family relocated to Berkeley where Fletcher worked for an Oakland tire company and for a while opened an unsuccessful restaurant business. This was a critical period in the Fletcher family's life, and in 1960 tragedy hit hard. The family had been denied a rental house in Berkeley's white section and continuing racial problems, combined with continuing economic pressures, took their toll, and Fletcher's wife, Mary, committed suicide.

In 1960 as well, the struggling Fletcher became involved in politics again, this time as a paid staff member for the Nixon-Lodge campaign. His task was to "Republicanize" the East Bay Area's strong concentration of blacks who comprised the Democratic Seventeenth Assembly District. The Republican candidate's bid for Congress in the election failed by a wide margin, but Fletcher demonstrated in his work that he had tremendous influence and organizational skills. He had built a Republican organization of some two hundred volunteers. Still interested in education, between 1960 and 1965 he taught at Burbank Junior High School located in Berkeley. His interest in school integration continued as well, for he became a special project director for Berkeley's board of education and helped desegregate the local school system. He continued his political activities, running for the state assembly in 1962. His two-to-one-margin loss did not discourage him; he had put up a good fight for the Republicans. Fletcher remained active in politics as well as in civil rights activities. He was a member of the Alameda County Republican Central Committee from 1962 to 1964 and chaired the advisory commission on civil rights for the California Republican Assembly (1962–64). He did postgraduate work at San Francisco State College in 1964–65.

In 1967 Fletcher moved to the state of Washington, where he directed a federally funded manpower development program in East Pasco. The program addressed hard-core, semi-literate black migrants from the South, who lived on the outskirts of that small town in the southeastern part of the state. Although the program failed due to difficulties with local welfare officials, Fletcher had trained 380 men. After that, he established on his own initiative, the East Pasco Self-Help Cooperative, an urban renewal project. Again he entered the political arena and was elected overwhelmingly to the Pasco city council, serving from 1968 to 1969. He was employee relations specialist for the Nanford atomic energy facility in Richmond, Washington in 1967. He remained connected to politics and in 1968–69 he was a special assistant to Washington governor Daniel J. Evans. Around this time as well, he was alternate delegate to the United Nations General Assembly. Meanwhile, Fletcher's community help program in East Pasco caught the eye of the national Republican party and brought him an invitation to address the party's platform committee in 1968. His self-help program became the basis for the "black capitalism" program that the Republican National Convention endorsed that summer at its convention in Miami. Meanwhile, he moved forward with political activities, becoming the first black nominee for statewide office in Washington. Although he lost the election by only a few thousand votes, he had fared well in a state whose population was only 2 percent black.

Now an attractive figure in his party, President Richard M. Nixon appointed Fletcher his assistant secretary for wage and labor standards in the Department of Labor, on March 14, 1969. As the highest-ranking black in Nixon's administration, Fletcher and his career were on the national stage. He also had far-reaching power, overseeing the Office of Federal Contract Compliance, the Bureau of Labor Standards, the Women's Bureau, the Wage and Hour and Public Contract Division, the Bureau of Employee's Compensation, and the Office of Wage Determinations. He took a hard look at economic security for blacks and concentrated on using federal power to bring about equal employment opportunities. The Office of Federal Contracts Compliance (OFCC), established during the Lyndon B. Johnson administration, was the vehicle for carrying this task. He reorganized the OFCC and set up a compliance review system that required firms receiving federal contracts to give monthly reports.

Becomes "Father of Affirmative Action"

In 1969, Art Fletcher, as he was called, concentrated on the construction industry, where a mere 2 percent of the highest paying construction jobs were held by blacks. Fletcher called for hearings in Chicago in September 1969 to learn about union activities and union resistance to job integration. Conflicts between local black groups and union workers and some five hundred white construction workers who crowded the meeting site put Fletcher in harms way, forcing him to barricade himself in his hotel room. Meanwhile, Fletcher and the OFCC revised a plan that the Johnson administration had developed early on and set goals to address employment practices for racial minorities on federal projects. Secretary of Labor George Shultz put the plan into effect in the summer of 1969. It was called the Philadelphia Plan. That summer, Fletcher held hearings in Philadelphia and found indisputably that seven different construction trade unions practiced racial discrimination. After that, he put in place a plan that required federal construction workers in Philadelphia to establish goals to hire minorities and follow this by putting forth "good faith effort" to reach these goals. If not, they would face sanctions.

Some of the projects that the Nixon administration put in place, such as the experimental home town plans that called for voluntary hiring programs, gave the black community a negative image of the administration. There was mixed reaction from the black community: black militants called for totally independent development of black communities; some blacks claimed that the plan did too little; and others claimed that the aim was to drive a wedge between black and white workers by attacking unions. Fletcher went ahead with his "Order No. Four" in February 1970, setting up more stringent rules for hiring minorities and later issued show cause orders to some firms, who had to do just that or perhaps be debarred from defense contract-bidding.

Fletcher's plan became the model for affirmative action programs elsewhere. Quoted in the Washington Post, he told Fortune magazine in 2000, "Affirmative action changed the American workplace for the better, forever." Proud of his work in this area, he said, "I'm proud to say that I set the stage for today's workplace and workforce diversity efforts." Years later, he told an audience in Peoria, Illinois, cited in the New York Times, that "the purpose of affirmative action is so that you can do what God intended you to do and be what he intended you to be." Even later, he urged corporations to keep affirmative action alive. At the time of Fletcher's death, Julian Bond, chair of the NAACP Board of Directors, said in an article from the NAACP that he made the Philadelphia Plan "a prototype of early affirmative action decrees. As he often said, it 'put flesh and blood on Dr. King's dream.'"

Fletcher resigned his post in the Nixon administration in December 1971 to become head of the United Negro College Fund (UNCF), then an organization of forty black colleges that came together for joint fundraising. While he was there, Forest Long of the advertising agency Young and Rubicam created the phrase "A mind is a terrible thing to waste" that became the UNCF's slogan and pierced America's conscientiousness toward financial support. Many sources, however, attributed the slogan to Fletcher. UNCF continues to use the phrase in promotional pieces. At odds with the fund's leaders, a little over a year later Fletcher stepped down, but not before he had started a management training program and had begun a grass-roots effort to reach blacks beyond the middle class.

Moving into private enterprise, in 1973 Fletcher founded and served as president of the consulting firm Arthur A. Fletcher and Associates. Its mission was to provide consulting services in government relations, management relations, and human resource development. It also conducted affirmative action technical assistance seminars and workshops at colleges throughout the country. In a joint venture with the Gray Hound Corporation, the firm provided food service and lodging for workers at the Alaskan pipeline project. In the 1980s the firm held the food services contract at Fort Belvoir, Virginia and served meals to troops stationed there. He left the firm in 1989. While with his firm, however, Fletcher testified at the hearings of the House Judiciary Committee in 1973 in support of Gerald R. Ford's nomination for vice president of the United States. Ford repaid him by appointing him deputy advisor of urban affairs. Some claim that in this post he became known as the father of the affirmative action enforcement movement.

In this position, Fletcher was responsible to James M. Cannon, the executive director for domestic affairs. He reviewed proposals, conferred with government and corporate leaders, and met with Congress and other federal officials. The black community kept in touch with Fletcher, informing him of ongoing activities. He visited these institutions and solicited their advice. He also had contact with educational, social, and political organizations. Blacks in large corporations, small enterprises, and in neighborhood groups sought his assistance in urban issues. Fletcher's service came during the Ford administration's last year—an election year—and he became active in the reelection campaign. He traveled throughout the country giving speeches and discussing Ford's domestic policies. While in the field, he met with community leaders and private citizens at the local and national levels. Those who sought funds from various federal agencies for projects dealing with the elderly, housing, mass transit, and other issues often gave Fletcher their proposal for review. Small businesses saw him as liaison between their offices and bureaucracy.

Heads Civil Rights Commission

In 1978, Fletcher took another unsuccessful stab at political office by becoming the Republican candidate for mayor of Washington, D.C., challenging Marion Barry. He did so even with full knowledge that there were few registered Republican voters in the city.

His big chance at effecting change in civil rights came in 1990, when President Bush appointed him chair of the Civil Rights Commission, a post he held until 1993. He endorsed the Civil Rights Act of 1991 as well as the nomination of Clarence Thomas, who became the second black ever on the U.S. Supreme Court (Thurgood Marshall was the first). He was persuaded that Thomas benefited from Brown v. Board of Education as well as from affirmative action—and knew it. Thomas was "fortunate enough to ride them both all the way to the top," he told the Boston Globe, cited in the Washington Post.

Fletcher never lost his zeal for equal economic opportunity. By 2003, he owned and managed Fletcher's Learning System, Inc. The firm created, produced, and marketed books, training manuals, and audio and videotapes to assist companies that sought to meet governmental laws, statutes, and guidelines for maintaining equal business opportunities for minorities. Fletcher took the program to national and international audiences. He was practically a constant presidential adviser, giving support to presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and George H. W. Bush. Although he was a staunch Republican, the outspoken Fletcher admonished Reagan and Bush for failing to support civil rights. Reports on Fletcher's opinions of those Republican presidents and their support of civil rights are conflicting. He denied that the Nixon administration was racially biased and claimed, if that were true, he would not have kept his post. He would not defend every action that the administration took, though. According to the Washington Post, he called Reagan "the worst president for civil rights in this century." When he headed the Civil Rights Commission, he was highly critical of Bush for "labeling civil rights legislation as a quota bill."

Late in life, Fletcher became an advocate of the National Black Chamber of Commerce. He belonged to various professional and civic groups, including the NAACP, and the American Legion. His numerous awards included the George Washington Honor Medal from the Freedom Foundation of Valley Forge (1969), the Russwurm Award from the National Newspaper Publishers Association (1970), and the Living Legend Award from the National Caucus and Center on Black Aged, Inc. (1995). He received honorary degrees from Allegheny and Malcolm X colleges, and Washburn, Virginia Union, and Denver universities.

Fletcher was six feet four inches tall and immensely popular, humorous, and creative. He was a devout Methodist who each morning read his favorite passages from the Sermon on the Mount in the Bible. Fletcher died of a heart attack at his home in Washington, D.C. on July 12, 2005, at the age of eighty. (Some sources claim, however, that he died at George Washington University Hospital in Washington.) His first wife, Mary Fletcher, died in 1961. His son Arthur Jr. died in 1973, and another son, Phillip, died in 1989. A daughter, Phyllis Hatcher, died in 1990. He was survived his second wife Bernyce Hassan-Fletcher, whom he married on May 5, 1965; a son, Paul; a daughter Sylvia; and a host of grand-and great-grandchildren. An NAACP article called him "a friend and mentor to those in both political parties who believed in civil rights." Joe Holly for the Washington Post hailed him as "a maverick Republican who proudly laid claim to the title 'the father of affirmative action.'"

REFERENCES

Books

Gomes, Daniel. "Arthur Allen Fletcher." In The Greenwood Encyclopedia of African American Civil Rights. Vol. I. Eds. Charles D. Lowery and John F. Marszalek. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2003.

Periodicals

Holley, Joe. "Affirmative Action Pioneer Advised GOP Presidents." Washington Post, 14 July 2005.

Joiner, Lottie L. "Arthur Fletcher: On the Right." Crisis 112 (September/October 2005): 12.

McGann, Chris. "Arthur Fletcher, 1924–2005: Mission Was Carving Out Opportunity for Minorities." Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 13 July 2005.

O'Donnell, Michele. "Arthur Fletcher, G.O.P Adviser, Dies at 80." New York Times, 14 July 2005.

Online

"Arthur A. Fletcher: The Activist." Friends of America's Future. http://www/theenterprize.com/FRIENDS/fletcher.htm (Accessed 18 September 2005).

Good, Diane. "A Moment in Time: Arthur A. Fletcher: Father of the Affirmative Action Enforcement Movement." http://www/kshs.org/features/feat202.htm (Accessed 5 September 2005).

"NAACP Mourns Death of Arthur Fletcher." http://www/naccp.org/news/2005/2005-07-13.html (Accessed 5 September 2005).