David Hamilton Golland. A Terrible Thing to Waste: Arthur Fletcher and the Conundrum of the Black Republican [Book Review]

Abstract

In his biography of Arthur Fletcher—one-time professional football player, former head of the United Negro College Fund, and most notably the primary architect of federal affirmative action policy—David Hamilton Golland seeks to unravel the "conundrum" of the modern Black Republican—that is, why would someone who many heralded as a civil rights hero and whose core principles were largely abandoned by the GOP remain a Republican to his dying day? Chronicling Fletcher's Republican activism from his time as vice chairman of the Kansas Young Republicans in the 1940s to his appointment as assistant secretary of labor during the Nixon administration, Golland joins scholars such as Leah Wright-Rigueur, Timothy Thurber, and Joshua Farrington in investigating moderate Black Republicans' efforts to fight for civil rights from within the party of Lincoln and their often-failed attempts to stem the rising tide of conservatism in the party between the 1930s and 1970s.

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