Presentations
Papers
"A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Waste: Arthur Fletcher, Religion, and the American Underclass."
"Go West, Brother Man: Challenges Faced by an African-American Politician in California, 1959-1965."
"From Pasco, Washington, to Washington, D.C.: Arthur A. Fletcher and the American Dream, 1965-1969."
"Constructing Equal Employment Opportunity: Arthur Fletcher and the Philadelphia Plan, 1969-1971."
"Only Nixon Could Go To Philadelphia: The Philadelphia Plan, the AFL-CIO, and the Politics of Race Hiring."
"Industrial Intersection: Slavery and Industry in Late Antebellum Virginia."
"The Despot's Heel: Race, Politics, and Industry in Late Antebellum Maryland."
Conferences
Department of Psychiatry, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, May 29, 2012
Organization of American Historians, April 19-22, 2012
North American Labor History Conference, Wayne State University, October 22, 2011, Detroit, Michigan
American Historical Association Pacific Coast Branch, August 13, 2011
Historians of the Twentieth Century United States, Oxford University, July 9, 2011
National Conference on Civil Rights, June 20, 2011
Social Science Research Council, Columbia University, June 3, 2011
Department of Psychiatry, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, May 24, 2011
National Association for Ethnic Studies, Claremont Graduate University, April 8, 2011
Association for African-American Historical Research and Preservation, February 5, 2011
Mid-Atlantic World History Association, November 12, 2010
Race and Labor Matters, December 4, 2003
|
|
"A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Waste: Arthur Fletcher, Religion, and the American Underclass," May 2011
Arthur A. Fletcher (1924-2005) was born the son of a Buffalo Soldier and a schoolteacher who often cleaned houses, unable to find work in the segregated education systems of the southwest. From these humble origins he went on to advise four United States presidents and head the United Negro College Fund, where he was credited with coining the phrase “A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste.” Along the way he served in Patton’s 3rd Army in Europe, where he was wounded and decorated; participated in early planning sessions for Brown v. Board while in college in Topeka, Kansas; and became the first black football player for the Baltimore Colts. He developed a self-help cooperative association, became an equal employment opportunity consultant for government contractors, and implemented the Revised Philadelphia Plan, the government’s first affirmative action program. He was a powerful public speaker in the black Southern Baptist preacher tradition, but few in the public knew of his strong spiritual life. After his wife tragically committed suicide in a psychotropic-induced delirium in 1960, Fletcher became an ordained minister and developed what he called the “Victorious Living Creed”—a set of spiritual beliefs combined with the 1960s self-help phenomenon which he hoped would allow African-Americans to rise out of the depths of poverty and take advantage of the new opportunities available thanks to civil rights legislation and affirmative action programs. By the mid-1970s he and his second wife, Bernyce, had established an organization to promote this program known as the Society for Victorious Living. This paper will examine the role of spirituality and religion on Arthur Fletcher’s life and how his beliefs dovetailed with his work integrating the American workplace.
Presented at:
Spirituality, Political Engagement, and Public Life Conference, Social Science Research Council, Columbia University, New York, New York, June 3, 2011
|
"Go West, Brother Man: Challenges Faced by an African-American Politician in California, 1959-1965," March 2011
In 1959, Arthur Fletcher—a former professional football player and mid-level Kansas politician—moved to California. He was down on his luck, and things soon went from bad to worse. He made few inroads in Sacramento as the conservatives of his Republican party—including racist John Birchers—marginalized liberals and moderates. He suffered personal tragedy: his wife committed suicide, jumping off the Bay Bridge. Fletcher now found himself a single parent of five, struggling to make the rent. As far as he had come from childhood poverty in segregated Junction City, Kansas, Fletcher was back to square one. But he had an incredible tenacity and drive—and more than a few political connections. He resolved to use politics to improve the lot of his fellow man, especially the black man. He took a job as a teacher in an inner-city special needs program, funded by the War on Poverty, and ran for state assembly. Fletcher did well in the race—for a Republican—but lost. He moved to Pasco, Washington, founding a black self-help group and winning a city council seat. This brought the attention of Richard Nixon, who in 1968 was looking for a civil rights program that jibed with the Republican Party’s corporatist ethos. President Nixon appointed Fletcher to the Labor Department, where he implemented the Revised Philadelphia Plan, earning himself the title "father of affirmative action."
Fletcher’s experience was hardly typical of civil rights leaders. He preferred to work inside the system, with all the acceptance of it that that implied. But he knew what life was like in the ghetto, and resolved to put his insider’s skills to the task of undermining the very system he served. His years in California, which proved the most trying of his life, were formative, and are the subject of this paper.
Presented at:
39th Annual National Association of Ethnic Studies conference, Claremont, California, April 8, 2011 (presented as "Go West, Brother Man: Arthur A. Fletcher in California, 1959-1965.")
Historians of the Twentieth Century United States conference, St. Anne's College, Oxford, England, July 9, 2011 (presented as "Go West, Brother Man: Arthur A. Fletcher in California, 1959-1965.")
American Historical Association Pacific Coast Branch conference, Seattle, Washington, August 13, 2011
and scheduled for presentation at:
Faculty Psychotherapy Conference, Department of Psychiatry, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, New York, May 29, 2012 (plenary address)
|
"From Pasco, Washington, to Washington, DC: Arthur A. Fletcher and the American Dream, 1965-1969," December 2010
In 1965, Arthur A. Fletcher--a former professional football player and Deputy Highway Commissioner for the State of Kansas--was a widowed single parent living in the projects in Oakland, California. But his knowledge of the workings of government and his connections to the Republican Party clearly played a role in his appointment that year by Washington Governor Dan Evans to run a Great Society program for minority education in Pasco, Washington. This was the start of one of the most remarkable transitions in American history. Suspecting that other politicos in Washington State wanted his program to fail, Fletcher took advantage of local Black enrollees' property options near the Hanford reactor site and converted his program into the East Pasco Cooperative Self-Help Organization, winning a seat on the Pasco City Council in the process. Meanwhile, Richard Nixon was looking to run for president again, and he sought a civil rights position which would jibe with his party's corporatist ethos. He found it in Fletcher's organization, and invited him to speak at the Republican National Convention in Miami in 1968. Fletcher returned to Washington State and immediately declared for Lieutenant Governor. He won primaries in every county in the state--a remarkable feat in that less than 2% of the electorate was Black, and a far higher percentage of Republicans were members of the racist John Birch society--but narrowly lost the general election. Nixon appointed Fletcher Assistant Secretary of Labor, where Fletcher implemented the Revised Philadelphia Plan, earning himself the title "father of affirmative action." He went on to head the United Negro College Fund, run for mayor of Washington, DC, advise three more Republican presidents, and run for president himself in 1996 to protest his party's turn away from civil rights.
Presented at:
Black History at Home and Abroad: Uncovering the Past conference, Association for African American Historical Research and Preservation, Northwest African American Museum, Seattle, Washington, February 5, 2011
Faculty Psychotherapy Conference, Department of Psychiatry, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, New York, May 24, 2011 (plenary address, presented as "Analyzing the Impact of a Black Republican: Arthur A. Fletcher in Washington State, 1965-1969.")
33rd Annual North American Labor History Conference: "Labor Movement, Movement of Labor," Oct. 22, 2011, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan (presented as "From Pasco, Washington, to Washington, DC: Arthur A. Fletcher and the Quest for Equal Employment Opportunity, 1965-1969.")
|
"Constructing Equal Employment Opportunity: Arthur Fletcher and the Philadelphia Plan, 1969-1971," August 2010
In early 1969, the Philadelphia Plan--a program whereby federal construction contractors were required to hire minimum numbers of skilled Black workers--was in jeopardy. The General Accounting Office had declared the program illegal, and contractors who had signed affirmative action agreements went back to the status quo,hiring directly from the segregated--and in the skilled trades, lily-white--unions. This threatened not only the hard work that federal labor officials had done for years trying to develop affirmative action programs for one of the most blatantly discriminatory industries, but also the city- and community-based affirmative action projects, which were not subject to federal funds and therefore not subject to the Philadelphia Plan, but had nonetheless adopted the principles of the policy.
Into this conundrum stepped Arthur Fletcher. A World War Two veteran and the first Black player for the Baltimore Colts, Fletcher had founded a self-help organization in Pasco, Washington, and become the 1968 Republican nominee for Lieutenant Governor. As Nixon's Assistant Secretary of Labor, Fletcher resolved to go to work integrating the building trades. He determined that the Philadelphia Plan would be revived. The White House, meanwhile, was looking for a civil rights victory in Congress, and The Plan represented a mean to an end. Working with the OFCC, Fletcher and the White House re-instated, defended, and forcefully implemented the Revised Philadelphia Plan, developed similar programs for other cities, and integrated the skilled building trades.
Presented at:
Examining Race in the 21st Century conference, Mid-Atlantic World History Association, Monmouth University, West Long Branch, New Jersey, November 12, 2010
National Conference on Civil Rights, Philadelphia, Mississippi, June 20, 2011
and scheduled for presentation at:
Organization of American Historians Conference, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, April 19-22, 2012
|
"Only Nixon Could Go To Philadelphia: The Philadelphia Plan, the AFL-CIO, and the Politics of Race Hiring," November 2003
In April, 1969, at a luncheon in Philadelphia sponsored by the Jewish Labor Committee and the Negro Trade Union Leadership Council, AFL-CIO Legislative Director Andrew J. Biemiller stated that the embattled "labor-liberal-civil rights coalition must be maintained and strengthened because its job isn't done." Biemiller's worry--that a rift was developing in the coalition over the issue of affirmative action--was well-founded. The building and Construction Trades' notorious exclusion of most blacks from all but the meanest jobs did not jibe well with the umbrella organization's official attitude of equal opportunity. The previous autumn the coalition had failed to prevent the election of Richard M. Nixon to the presidency of the United States. And whereas President Lyndon B. Johnson's Secretary of Labor, Willard Wirtz, had played an active role in maintaining the coalition by promoting programs that aided union leadership in its apprenticeship and outreach programs designed to enroll minority youths in unions, Nixon's labor secretary, George Schultz, had little faith in union efforts at connection with the black community.
Read More
Presented at:
Race and Labor Matters conference, CUNY Graduate Center, New York, New York, December 4, 2003
|
"Industrial Intersection: Slavery and Industry in Late Antebellum Virginia," Master's Thesis, University of Virginia, August 2002
"Of all the parties engaged or interested in its transportation and manufacture, the South is the only one that does not make a profit. Nor does she, as a general thing, make a profit by producing it." "We have reference only to those who are not too perverse, or ignorant, to perceive naked truths--that free labor is far more profitable than slave labor." So wrote Hinton Rowan Helper in 1857, thus proving himself not only the most vociferous of the southerners who demanded slavery's eradication, but also one outspoken in his contention that slave-driven industry was inefficient and unprofitable because it employed slaves.
Read More
|
"The Despot's Heel: Race, Politics, and Industry in Late Antebellum Maryland," Senior Honors Thesis, Baruch College, May 2000
Winner, First Annual Edwin and Barbara Kanner Award
Slavery in Maryland, as a labor system, was attempting to make the transition from agriculture to industry and was doing so to a very profitable degree. This combination of its "southern" quality--slavery--with its "northern" quality--industry--made Maryland a border state in every sense, and helped shape the highly-contentious years of 1861 to 1865, during which the state had to resolve its most difficult and divisive issues. The Despot's Heel: Race, Politics, and Industry in late Antebellum Maryland explores those issues and attempts to answer the political and socioeconomic questions of the day: first, was slavery viable in an increasingly-industrializing Maryland? Second, how did blacks, both free and slave, contribute to late antebellum Maryland society and economy? and third, what was the social, political, and economic position of Maryland just prior to and during the Civil War?
Read More
Last updated 16 December, 2011 (DHG)
|
|
