11 Facts About Ezola Foster

Ezola Broussard Foster was an American conservative political activist, writer, and politician.

Ezola Foster was president of the interest group Black Americans for Family Values, author of the book What's Right for All Americans, and the Reform Party candidate for vice president in the 2000 US presidential election with presidential nominee Pat Buchanan.

Ezola Foster was born and reared in Maurice in Vermilion Parish in southwestern Louisiana, in 1938.

Ezola Foster would go on to earn, in 1973, a Master's in School Management and Administration from Pepperdine University.

Ezola Foster first ran for office in 1986, securing the Republican nomination for the California Assembly's 48th district.

In 1994, while teaching at Bell High School in Bell, California, Ezola Foster was a public advocate of Proposition 187, a California ballot initiative to deny government programs of social services, health care, and public education to illegal immigrants.

Ezola Foster's position was extremely unpopular at the school where she taught, which was 90 percent Hispanic.

Ezola Foster's critics claimed Foster, who had never held political office, was chosen because she was African American; they likened it to affirmative action, a diversity-increasing policy that Buchanan had always opposed.

Ezola Foster, who supported Buchanan's campaigns in 1992 and 1996, quit her speaking tour to join the race.

Ezola Foster is the first African American and second woman to be nominated for vice president by a party that was recognized and funded by the Federal Election Commission.

Ezola Foster's first marriage ended in annulment, she said, when she found out that her husband was a convicted felon.