About Ward Connerly
Wardell Anthony "Ward" Connerly is an American political and anti-affirmative action activist, businessman, and former University of California Regent (1993–2005). He is also the founder and the chairman of the American Civil Rights Institute, a national non-profit organization in opposition to racial and gender preferences, and is the president of Californians for Equal Rights, a non-profit organization active in the state of California with a similar mission. He is considered to be the man behind California's Proposition 209 prohibiting race- and gender-based preferences in state hiring, contracting and state university admissions, a program known as affirmative action. The young Connerly lived first with Bertha and James Louis, his maternal aunt and uncle. During the late 1960s, Connerly became friends with then-legislator Pete Wilson (who would become governor in 1991). Connerly became convinced that affirmative action, as practiced by UC, was another kind of racial discrimination.
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