Arthur Fletcher was born in Phoenix, Arizona in 1924. The son of a Buffalo Soldier, his mother cleaned other peoples’ homes despite her training as a schoolteacher and a nurse, proving an early lesson for young Arthur in American racial culture. After moving around the Southwest for much of Fletcher’s childhood, the family eventually settled in Junction City, Kansas, where Fletcher became the first black all-state football player and graduated from the integrated local high school after organizing a protest against segregated yearbook sections.

The year was 1943; he wed his high school sweetheart Mary, a daughter of black high society, and joined the army. Wounded in Europe as a Military Policeman on the “Red Ball Express” supply line under General George Patton, Fletcher returned to Kansas and attended Washburn University in Topeka on the G.I. Bill, where he became involved in early strategy sessions for the Brown vs. Board of Ed. school segregation case. A college football career resulted in his becoming the first black player for the Baltimore Colts, but his old war injury, while hardly critical, forced his early retirement from the sport.1

After campaigning among black voters for liberal Republican gubernatorial candidate Fred Hall in 1954, Fletcher became Kansas Deputy State Highway Commissioner. Now with five children, he and Mary seemed to be living the American dream. There were still important vestiges of segregation in Kansas: the Fletchers were expected to live on the black side of Topeka, and many public facilities—including the elementary schools until 1954—remained segregated.

But these restrictions ironically proved liberating for the Fletchers, precisely because of Art’s political importance and Mary’s pedigree. The Fletchers moved among the top social circles in Topeka’s African-American community. The eldest daughter, Phyllis, was the belle of the ball at dances at the segregated YMCA. And rather than force on their children the difficulties encountered by young Linda Brown, the Fletchers sent them to an integrated parochial school, trading on Mary’s Catholic faith.2

But storm clouds brewed on the horizon. When Governor Hall lost his re-election bid, Fletcher couldn’t find work. He and his young family moved to Berkeley, California, where tragedy struck: his unhappy wife, being treated as an outpatient with psychotropic drugs, killed herself by jumping off the Bay Bridge. With his older children drifting away, Fletcher rebuilt his life, becoming a special-needs schoolteacher and running (unsuccessfully) for state assembly. In 1965 he remarried and moved to Pasco, Washington, to direct a War on Poverty program, and in 1966 he founded a black self-help cooperative organization there.3

That organization’s success won Fletcher a seat on the Pasco City Council in 1967 and brought him to the attention of moderate Republican Governor Daniel Evans, who introduced him to Richard Nixon. The former vice president, who was considering a second bid for the White House, was seeking a policy position that could mesh the achievements of the Civil Rights Era with the corporatist ideology of the Republican Party. In 1968, with the nomination in hand, Nixon asked Fletcher to speak at the Republican National Convention. Upon returning to Washington State, Fletcher declared his candidacy for lieutenant governor, and won the Republican primary in every county, a particularly remarkable feat considering that less than two per cent of the electorate was black. When Fletcher narrowly lost the general election, Nixon nominated him Assistant Secretary of Labor for Employment Standards, with responsibility for the Office of Federal Contract Compliance. In June 1969, Fletcher ordered implementation of the Philadelphia Plan, the first federal affirmative action policy.4

The Philadelphia Plan came under attack from Americans across the political spectrum, inside and outside of government. While the United States Senate was considering a vote to make it illegal, Fletcher advised the Nixon administration on how to proceed, and the Plan was upheld. But when hardhats rioted to protest anti-war demonstrations and the president abandoned public support of the Plan as a sop to his new friends in construction, Fletcher grew disenchanted with the president’s overall civil rights policy. After a brief stint on the United Nations delegation, Fletcher resigned from the government. He became Executive Director of the United Negro College Fund, where some credit him with coining the phrase “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” He later advised Presidents Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush, and ran for president himself in 1996 to protest the direction the Republican Party had taken on civil rights. He died in 2005.5

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1 Stu Dunbar, “Just As It Seems to Me,” State Journal (Topeka, Kansas), August n.d., 1948; “Athlete Assumes Y Post,” Tri-City Herald, April 12, 1965; John Whitaker to Bill Casselman, February 25, 1969 (Records of President Richard M. Nixon, Collection of the Department of Labor, box 5, “Executive, 1” folder, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD); “A Hard-Driving Black Official: Arthur Allen Fletcher,” New York Times, December 2, 1971; Arthur Fletcher Interview, April 9, 2003, by Political Science Department, Washburn University, in possession of the author; Arthur Fletcher biography at The History Makers, from an interview conducted May 29, 2003 (http://www.thehistorymakers.com/biography/biography.asp?bioindex=526&category=lawmakers, accessed October 16, 2010); “Presidential Adviser Arthur Fletcher, 80, Dies; ‘Father of Affirmative Action’ Counseled Nixon, Ford, Reagan, G. H. W. Bush,” Associated Press, July 13, 2005; and Mark Peterson, “The Kansas Roots of Arthur Allen Fletcher: Football All-Star to the ‘Father of Affirmative Action,’” Kansas History, Vol. 34, no. 3 (Autumn, 2011), pp. 224-241.

2 “A Hard-Driving Black Official,” December 2, 1971; Paul and Sylvia Fletcher interview, December 28, 2010, by and in possession of the author; Paul Fletcher interview, April 2, 2011, by and in possession of the author; and Sylvia Fletcher, e-mail message to the author, April 6, 2011.

3 “Mental Patient Leaps to Death,” Oakland Tribune, October 3, 1960; “Y Picks Director for Pasco Project,” Tri-City Herald, April 9, 1965; “East Pasco Coop Launches Service Station Business,” Tri-City Herald, n.d. (September) 1966; “Pasco Cooperative Seeks Church Grant,” Tri-City Herald, September 20, 1967; Homer E. Socolofsky, Kansas Governors (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1990), 200-203; Arthur Fletcher interview, April 9, 2003; Paul Fletcher interview, September 25, 2010, by and in possession of the author; Paul and Sylvia Fletcher interview, December 28, 2010; and JoinCalifornia.Com (1962 election history, http://www.joincalifornia.com/election/1962-11-06, accessed March 16, 2011).

4 Arthur A. Fletcher Candidate Statement, Tri-City Herald, September 17, 1967; “Fletcher Appointed to Urban Council,” Tri-City Herald, November 1, 1967; “Campbell-Stinson Race Undecided; Fletcher, Seattleite First Negroes to Win Council Elections in State,” Tri-City Herald, November 8, 1967; “We’ll Field a Great Team: Fletcher Swamps Hydroplane Driver,” Tri-City Herald, September 18, 1968; “Fletcher Loses; To Leave Pasco,” Tri-City Herald, November 7, 1968; “Nixon Names WU Grid Great to Labor Post,” Topeka Capital, March 15, 1969; Nixon to United States Senate, March 14, 1969 (Nixon Records, Department of Labor Collection, box 5 “Executive, 1” folder); “Negro Named to Key Position in Labor Department,” Philadelphia Bulletin, March 15, 1969; Peter H. Binzen, “U.S. to Revise and Reinstate ‘Phila. Plan’ on Minority Hiring,” Philadelphia Bulletin, June 12, 1969; Arthur Fletcher interview, April 9, 2003; Dan Evans interview, October 28, 2010, by and in possession of the author; Sam Reed interview, November 5, 2010, by and in possession of the author; and David Hamilton Golland, Constructing Affirmative Action: The Struggle for Equal Employment Opportunity (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2011), 125-126.

5 “Senate Votes Against Philadelphia Work Plan; Hands Nixon Setback in Rejecting Move to Put More Negroes in Building Jobs,” Los Angeles Times, December 19, 1969; Robert B. Semple, Jr., “Philadelphia Plan: How White House Engineered Major Victory,” New York Times, December 26, 1969; “U.S. Will Terminate a Contract for Failure to Hire Negroes,” New York Times, August 20, 1970; Arthur Fletcher interview, February 8, 1971, by Robert Wright (Moorland-Spingarn Library, Howard University, NIDS #3.178.222); Arthur Fletcher Interview, April 9, 2003; Arthur Fletcher biography at The History Makers, May 29, 2003; “Presidential Adviser Arthur Fletcher, 80, Dies,” July 13, 2005; and Trevor Griffey, “‘The Blacks Should Not Be Administering the Philadelphia Plan’: Nixon, the Hard Hats, and ‘Voluntary’ Affirmative Action,” in David Goldberg and Trevor Griffey, Eds., Black Power at Work: Community Control, Affirmative Action, and the Construction Industry (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010), 142, 152-156.

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