Ezola Foster | |
|---|---|
 Ezola Foster | |
| Born | August 9, 1938 Maurice, Louisiana, U.S. |
| Died | May 22, 2018 Boulder City, Nevada, U.S. |
| Education | BA-Business Education (Texas Southern University) Masters-School Management and Administration (Pepperdine University) |
| Alma mater | Texas Southern University Pepperdine University |
| Home Base | Southern California |
| Groupaffiliations | Black Americans for Family Values (founder and president) |
Whenever we decide on a Rogues' Gallery entry for a person we require a picture of that person. Never before now has that picture been so important, because if we did not make one of Ezola Foster available and just went with straight text, readers would believe that we are writing about yet another neo-Nazi talking shit and not about a black woman. People, this one is that bad.
She is known best as Pat Buchanan's running mate in the 2000 presidential election. Foster is one of our oldest entries, but in the Gallery's existence, her entry was just a simple paragraph and she was in our backlog for a more extensive one. We are good for going after Black Conservatives here, and each time we do we are always amazed by their ability to adopt the extreme racist practices of their white counterparts, while at the same time attacking other people of color for racism. Still, as we have said in the past, we have no problems treating them like the fascists they are. We really have no problems with that when it comes to Ezola Foster.
Foster was born August 9, 1938, in Texas, one of five children to a single mother. She was raised both there and in Louisiana, and speaks often of living in the Jim Crow South. Apparently segregation wasn't all that bad to her, because she maintains that African Americans did not suffer under that system. According to the Washington Post, she is more than apologetic of that era. Yes, the law said black people had to sit at the back of the bus, but sometimes, she says, the less racist white drivers would let her sit wherever she wanted. They had to sit in the back of the Catholic Church she attended and could not receive Communion until the whites did but that was fine because
"after the Mass we saw the whites and blacks hugging and talking."
And then there is that thing about how blacks could attend the local movie theater only one day a month, but that wasn't so bad either, because "it was so exciting to have the theater all to ourselves." Her 1995 book "What's Right for All Americans" took shots at anyone who would dare denigrate the good name of Jim Crow.
"It's a gross distortion to say we were all ill-treated," she wrote. "We were not sacrificial lambs."
Then again, we could be taking about a good-enough-for-thee-but-not-for-me situation. As soon as Foster graduated from the Texas State College for Negroes (now Texas Southern University) in 1960, she wasted no time getting the hell out of her Jim Crow "paradise", finding her way to Los Angeles, for 29 years she lived in Watts, taking a job in a law office. She also married and had a son, but when she found out her husband was a convicted felon, the marriage was annulled. She would not marry again until 1977, when she married truck driver Chuck Foster.
In 1963 she began her career as a schoolteacher. 1965 was the year of the Watts Uprising and her first foray into political activism came just afterwards, when she began organizing parents and teachers to make sure public money was used efficiently and honestly. In time she would be earn a reputation for combativeness, often butting heads with school administrators. She also battled with fellow teachers and when she filed a grievance with the teachers union, charging a faculty colleague with spreading rumors about her, it was determined that it was her, not the colleague, that was the problem and for the most part no one wanted her teaching because of all the upheaval she would cause.
By the 80s, she was getting a rep around town as a prominent conservative activist, enough for her to make a run for the State Assembly in 1984. She was stomped into the ground by her opponent, Maxine Waters, but tried again in 1986. Although 17 years a Democrat, she switched to Republican this time, and in a predominately Democratic district Waters, who was very popular, stomped her again. Waters would later go on to be one of the most prominent congresspersons today.
Foster, however, had other irons in the fire, having founded in 1985 and being President of Black Americans for Family Values (BAFV), an Christian Reich organization that lobbied against AIDS education in schools, which she regarded as promoting homosexuality. Although she and the group also goes after reproductive rights, and for that matter, progressive women in general (Foster once said on Politically Incorrect that feminists were not really women because they "don't like men"), anti-gay activism was the main thing.
In 1987 she went to the state Republican convention to protest recognition of the Log Cabin Club, a gay Republican organization. Armed with leaflets about how gays were taking over the Republican Party and signs reading, "The Democrats Are the Party of the Perverts, the Republicans Should Be the Party of the Family" was not enough to keep Foster from being arrested for trespassing, disturbing the peace and resisting arrest. The charges were later dropped. The irony in all of this nonsense is during her run for the Assembly, she sought and got the endorsement of the Log Cabin Club. Today, although she admits she did go to a Log Cabin meeting, she did not know what the group was about and did not receive, nor would she accept their endorsement.
Foster has another issue that figures prominently in her agenda. That would be the notion of fighting for what she calls "American" culture and against multiculturalism.
"Multiculturalism has divided the country, she once said. "Why should we celebrate any culture but American culture?"
Now to argue with her that American culture is in and of itself is multicultural is a waste of time because she has a warped view of what American culture is. American culture for her includes the Confederate flag.
"We had both sides in the (Civil) war," she told the Washington Post. "The Confederate flag represents a side that is part of our history. It is to be honored as part of our history... It's not a racial issue."
She needs to be reminded that this particular part of our history is among our bloodiest as the people who flew that flag were those who broke away from this country and killed thousands of American soldiers doing so. She doesn't see that part however. As we noted above, she has adopted the thinking of your typical racist, so the only thing she sees is Blacks opposing the flag. In other words it is a racial issue - for her.
And she does not stop there. In what has become an all too frequent and all too despicable position of many black conservatives in this country, Foster defends the slavery the Confederate states were known for, although her defense of it has to be the most pathetic. According to her, Africans were kidnapped, shackled, sent across the middle passage where millions died on the journey to America of disease and abuse, enslaved and tortured and forced to work under horrid conditions for over 200 years because God wanted the Africans to experience freedom!
"What Booker T. Washington said, 'We were brought here slaves as pagans, but we left out of slavery as Christians,'" she told delegates at the Reform Party's 2001 convention. "It was worth it."
Tell that to the millions of slaves who did not see the end of slavery Ezola. Tell that to the slaves who were the original ones who coined the phrase the "grateful dead" to describe those slaves who passed on and therefore truly free.
There is also the other position black conservatives also hold. She thinks of herself as a thorn in the side of Black leaders that, as opposed to her, enjoy wide support among the Black community. She considers the current push for civil rights "a revenge-and-reparations movement" and Jesse Jackson and other Black leaders "Leninist race-baiters." In addition, Black and Hispanic leaders fan the flames of racism by support for multiculturalism. To that end, when she once spoke at one of Jesse Lee Peterson's "Repudiate Jesse Jackson" rallies he puts on every January, she defended her aforementioned icon of "American" culture, the Confederate flag.
While we were dealing with Foster's hatred of Jesse Jackson, we should deal with a stunt she tried to pull once. In February 2000, she wrote this for the John Birch Society's rag the New American:
"Leninist politics is based entirely upon lies, and the most important lie told by Leninist race-baiters like Jesse Jackson is that black Americans are not individuals, but rather part of one undifferentiated "community" - headed, of course, by Jackson and other "Black Leaders." When I was a candidate for the California State Assembly in 1984, I saw billboards throughout Watts and South Central Los Angeles proclaiming, "ONE VOICE! ONE PEOPLE! ONE VOTE!" Those billboards were placed in support of Jesse Jackson's presidential campaign.
The evil that the Jackson campaign slogan represents can be better appreciated if it is presented in rough German translation: "EIN VOLK! EIN REICH! EIN FUHRER!" ("One people, one kingdom, one leader.") The Jackson campaign was using exactly the same rhetoric, and the same race-based politics that had been used so successfully by Lenin's German disciple, Adolf Hitler. Thus it was appropriate that Jackson supporter Maxine Waters, as a congressman, vocally supported the Brownshirt-like street thugs who tore South-Central Los Angeles apart during the 1992 "Rodney King" riots. It was also appropriate that Waters was a devoted defender of Bill Clinton during the impeachment hearings, insisting that whatever offenses Mr. Clinton may have committed against the rule of law, he was her leader - her F?- in the struggle against the "radical right."
Now considering the company she prefers to keep, Foster has a lot of gall trying to charge others of some sort of indirect fascism. There are enough real fascists around her - not to mention Foster herself - to suggest she needs to take care of her own backyard first. We need to note something else here though. The routine among conservatives where they try to deny that Hitler was a right-winger and actually a leftist has right up there with blaming blacks for slavery as the dumbest routine they have ever come up with. Here's a history lesson for Foster: Hitler could not be "Lenin's German disciple" Lenin was a Bolshevik, and Hitler regarded all Bolsheviks as Jews and just as much a menace to his Fatherland. Anyone who was a Bolshevik was to be killed. Consider another conservative ploy to avoid blame for their bullshit squashed.
So as she is going after black leaders, she is also going to go after their issues as well. Foster maintains the position that racism is no longer institutionalized, and that it only exists within individuals. Foster will say that racism is institutionalized in one area, however. "The institutionalized racism known as 'affirmative action' assumes that all whites are 'privileged' and all non-whites are 'victims,'" she says in the usual distortion of what affirmative action is. As she feels everything else is racism free, there is no way police for example can be racist when they step over the line. She said police were acting "in the line of duty" in the 1991 beating of black motorist Rodney King, and in 1995, she organized a testimonial fundraising dinner for Laurence Powell, one of the cops convicted of beating Rodney King. Scheduled to take place in a police department building, the city cancelled the dinner. Foster responded with a lawsuit demanding $155 million. She lost.
Now she may be down on Blacks, but she will tell you she is helping them. In fact she encourages them to participate in her crusade against immigration, saying that illegal immigration hurts Blacks the most in this country. One newspaper article notes how she and her husband complained about going to restaurants and other job sites, and only seeing Hispanics and no Blacks. They don't like the how Jesse Jackson would work to make the job market easier for Hispanics but not for his own people. They also complain of his inattention to black prison inmates being beaten by Hispanics every Super Bowl Sunday, or so she claims, the Mexicans in California prisons beat up the black inmates.
The truth of the matter is Foster's race hatred comes out the most when it comes to Hispanics. She has no love lost for those that have come to her adopted state, saying
"Mexicans kill cattle, rape white children, get into the states by traveling by way of the sewers, smell like shit and don't bathe."
Foster testified before Congress on immigration issues and gave active support to California's Proposition 187, serving on it steering committee. This was a ballot initiative designed to deny government benefits, including education, to illegal immigrants, and as this took place in 1994, the year in which anything right-wing was elected, giving the Republicans majorities in the House Senate and state governorships, it was smooth sailing to a yes vote. All political hell broke loose after that with Hispanic and progressive groups butting heads with the right wing as they worked to halt Prop. 187's implementation. Foster took her support for the initiative from the campaign trail to the fight to preserve it. In doing so she hooked up with Glenn Spencer and his group Voice of Citizens Together (VCT) and California Coalition for Immigration Reform leader Barbara Coe, both known racist activists.
At the time, Foster was teaching at Bell High School, whose student body is more than 90 percent Hispanic. In 1996, after an appearance on the MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour, she was attacked in an open letter written by several of her faculty colleagues.
"We are dismayed and angered at the apparent contempt [Foster] shows for the Bell Community and the use of lies and distortions in discussing the issue," the letter read. "The propaganda she uses to do this is reminiscent of another time in history when a vulnerable group became the victim of a big lie."
On July 4 of that year, she appeared at a VCT rally against illegal immigration. So did the Progressive Labor Party. This rally denigrated into a melee as pro-and anti-immigration groups traded blows for fifteen minutes before cops broke up the skirmish. There were no arrests, and many VCT goons left the scene with their asses handed to them. Foster left with hers intact, but she wasn't about to go back to Bell High School again. Saying, "It would have been suicidal for me to go back," Foster says she feared for her life and the school administration offered her no protection. She sued the school district, seeking damages for "serious physical ailments, emotional distress, fear, anxiety, depression and loss of self-esteem."
A judge dismissed the suit without trial. She also filed for worker's compensation claiming a "mental disorder" (public records black out the nature of the disorder). The district disputed the claim and lost, so she collected until 1998 when she retired from the school system. After 33 years, her career as a schoolteacher was done. Ironically, it ended with her being on the public dole that she tries to deny others!
1996 was also the year she joined the John Birch Society. Until 2000, she would go around the country as a traveling speaker for the group. At these engagements she would speak on how public education is overrun with homosexuals, abortion counselors and mind-control freaks, and that children are writing their own suicide notes in class. She had to leave that group however, as well as BAFV when Pat Buchanan came calling. On April 27, 2000, she joined him on the Reform Party Presidential ticket. During the press conference announcing the ticket, Foster made a laughable attempt to deflect the charges that Buchanan has built up over the years, which were the same ones she has had stuck to her. We had to share this with you:
"I have a message for those who continue to spread the lie that Pat Buchanan is a racist. I was born black, I attended all Negro schools including college, I grew up in the segregated South during Jim Crow. If anybody knows a racist, I do. Pat Buchanan ain't no racist.
"Now, there are some hateful people out there that are putting out the word that Pat Buchanan is homophobe. I have to tell you, I looked that up in the dictionary. I guess my dictionary is outgraded-- outdated, because I didn't find that word, but I suppose they mean homophobia. Well, from 1969 to 1984, until he died of AIDS, a teacher and I were very good friends. He even attended celebrations at my home, and I have to admit I even went with him to gay bars once in a while. So I know a homophobe when I see one. Pat Buchanan ain't no homophobe, believe me.
"At a recent rally in support of Pat Buchanan, I had the privilege of listening to Sam Cohen, the father of the neutron bomb. And Sam Cohen talked about Pat Buchanan. He first gave his background, his heritage dates back to Biblical days, he is of Jewish heritage. And he spoke of his relationship with Pat Buchanan, and he said that Pat Buchanan is not an anti- Semite. But let me be more emphatic. Pat Buchanan ain't no anti-Semite."
Well two interesting things happened after Foster was announced. One, no one bought anything Foster said about Buchanan, so Jews, homosexuals and people of color still stayed away. Two, Buchanan's support came mostly from racist activists, and when she got on the ticket they bolted. One of them, Buchanan's friend, American Renaissance's Jared Taylor, tried to look at the selection in a more focused way.
"The choice of Ezola Foster is an opportunity to clarify our thinking because it provides anti-racists with what they think is the perfect opportunity to accuse us of racial 'bigotry' in the real sense of the word: closed-mindedness," he wrote. "They will point out that Mrs. Foster is, if anything, even more outspokenly opposed to immigration than Mr. Buchanan, and that if he had chosen a white man with her views he would still have strong support among racially conscious whites. They will be right - and they are stupid enough to think this a moral victory. What they will never understand - and what Mr. Buchanan himself may never understand - is that to oppose the selection of Mrs. Foster because of her race is a matter of principle."
Buchanan was never expected to win, but this didn't help him among his people. He and Foster went down in flames. Buchanan regained some of his hatemonger base with his book Death of the West, but not much has been heard from Foster since the election. On Nov. 1, 2003, the day we updated this entry, she was supposed to appear at a fundraiser in La Canada, CA for Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo, the main xenophobe in Congress today, but that was it. This doesn't mean she is out of the game. It just simply means that no one is caring what she does for the most part. She does make the talking head shows every now and then, but it is doubtful she will be any more relevant as when she was Buchanan's running mate. Her hatemongering has earned her the extended vacation.
Foster died May 22, 2018 in Boulder City, Nevada, U.S. at the age of 79.