Ezola B. Foster

Ezola Broussard Foster (born August 9, 1938) is an American conservative political activist, writer, and politician. She is president of the interest group, Black Americans for Family Values, author of the book What's Right for All Americans, and was the Reform Party candidate for Vice President in the U.S. presidential election of 2000, running with Patrick J. Buchanan, the party's presidential nominee. In April 2002, Foster left the Reform Party to join the Constitution Party.

Career and political activism

Foster was born and reared in Maurice in Vermilion Parish in southwestern Louisiana and earned a master's degree from Texas Southern University in Houston, Texas. In 1960, she moved to Los Angeles, California, where she was employed as a public high school teacher for thirty-three years—teaching typing, business courses, and sometimes English classes.

She had sought public office prior to 2000—as a Democrat in the 1970s and as a Republican candidate for California State Assembly in 1984. In the 1980s, she became an outspoken opponent of pornography, sex education, AIDS education and gay rights and founded "Black Americans for Family Values." She has been affiliated with the John Birch Society, founded after World War II by the late Robert W. Welch, Jr., to the dismay of Moderate Republicans. She was arrested in 1987 with several other women while disrupting the California state Republican convention to protest its recognition of the Log Cabin Club, an organization of gay Republicans. In 1992, she was a staunch defender of the police officers in the Rodney King beating case and organized a testimonial dinner for Laurence Powell, one of the convicted officers, in 1995.