Arthur Fletcher

For the American baseball player, see Art Fletcher.

Arthur Fletcher (born December 22, 1924 in Phoenix, Arizona, died July 12, 2005 in Washington DC) was an American government official, widely referred to as the "father of affirmative action" as he was largely responsible for the Revised Philadelphia Plan. An African American and a Republican, he served in the Nixon, Ford, Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. In 1995, he briefly pursued a bid for the Republican presidential nomination. Numbers of his fellow Republicans were often at odds with the affirmative action policies which Fletcher initiated.

As head of the United Negro College Fund, he coined their famous slogan, "A mind is a terrible thing to waste."

[edit] References

Presidential adviser Arthur Fletcher, 80, dies, obituary on MSN. Accessed 20 July 2005.
Arthur Fletcher on HistoryMakers.com. Accessed 20 July 2005.
NPR obituary, in RealAudio or for Windows Media Player. Accessed 20 July 2005.
NPR commentary by his granddaughter, KUOW reporter and producer Phyllis Fletcher. Accessed 20 June 2006.

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v • d • e Affirmative action in the United States

Supreme Court decisions	Brown v. Board of Education (1954) • Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978) • Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) • Gratz v. Bollinger (2003) • Parents v. Seattle (2007)

Federal legislation and edicts	Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) • Executive Order 10925 (1961) • Civil Rights Act of 1964 • Executive Order 11246 (1965)

State initiatives	Proposition 209 (CA, 1996) • Initiative 200 (WA, 1998) • Proposal 2 (MI, 2006)

People	Ward Connerly • Arthur Fletcher