Up for auction the "Father of Affirmative Action" Arthur Fletcher Hand Signed 2X5 Card. 

ES-5949

Arthur

Allen Fletcher (December

22, 1924 – July 12, 2005) was an American government official, widely referred to as the

"father of affirmative action" as

he was largely responsible for the Revised Philadelphia Plan.

Arthur Fletcher, a Republican,

graduated from Washburn University and

obtained a degree from distance learning school La Salle Extension

University. Fletcher moved with his wife, Bernyce, and

two youngest children to Pasco, Washington, where he took a job with the

Hanford Atomic Energy Project. He also organized a community self-help program

in predominantly black East Pasco and landed a seat on the Pasco City Council.

In 1968, Fletcher ran for Lieutenant Governor of Washington State and narrowly

lost to the incumbent, John Cherberg. Fletcher was the first African American

in Washington as well as the West to contest a statewide electoral office. During

the campaign, his driver and bodyguard was Ted Bundy, the serial killer who was active in Republican

Party politics in the late 1960s through the early 1970s. Fletcher's

close race for Lieutenant Governor got the attention of newly elected President

Richard Nixon, who gave Fletcher a job in the incoming administration as

Assistant Secretary of Labor. An African American, he served in the Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and George H. W. Bush administrations. In 1978,

Fletcher ran for mayor of Washington, D.C.,

but was defeated by the popular Democrat Marion Barry. 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[7] and supported as the chairman from 1990 to 1993

of the United

States Commission on Civil Rights. As head of the United Negro College Fund,

Fletcher was rumored to have coined the famous slogan, "A mind is a

terrible thing to waste." In point of fact, however, the motto was created by Forest Long, of the advertising

agency Young & Rubicam, in partnership with the Ad Council. Fletcher

was a United States Army veteran during World War II and upon his death in 2005

was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.