A Terrible Thing to Waste

Arthur Fletcher (19242005) was the most important civil rights leader you've (probably) never heard of. The first black player for the Baltimore Colts, the father of affirmative action and adviser to four presidents, he coined the United Negro College Funds motto: A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Waste. Modern readers might be surprised to learn that Fletcher was also a Republican. Fletchers story, told in full for the first time in this book, embodies the conundrum of the postWorld War II black Republicanthe civil rights leader who remained loyal to the party even as it abandoned the principles he espoused.The upward arc of Fletchers political narrative begins with his first youthful protesta boycott of his high school yearbookand culminates with his appointment as assistant secretary of Labor under Richard Nixon. The Republican Party he embraced after returning from the war was the Party of Lincolna big tent, truly welcoming African Americans. A Terrible Thing to Waste shows us those heady days, from Brown v. Board of Education to Fletchers implementing of the Philadelphia Plan, the first major national affirmative action initiative. Though successes and accomplishments followed through successive Republican administrationsas chair of the US Commission on Civil Rights under George H. W. Bush, for example, Fletchers ability to promote civil rights policy eroded along with the GOPs engagement, as New Movement Conservatism and Nixons Southern Strategy steadily alienated black voters. The book follows Fletcher to the bitter end, his ideals and party in direct conflict and his signature achievement under threat. In telling Fletchers story, A Terrible Thing to Waste brings to light a little known chapter in the history of the civil rights movementand with it, insights especially timely for a nation so dramatically divided over issues of race and party.