Ward Connerly considers himself a dedicated proponent of civil rights. A black man born in Jim Crow Louisiana, Connerly has sought to carry on what he sees as the vital work of the civil rights movement. As a student at California State in the early 1960s, he testified before the state legislature in support of a law that would ban housing discrimination. After a successful business career, he was appointed to the University of California Board of Regents, and he then rose to national prominence in the 1990s for his efforts to get California voters to approve the Civil Rights Initiative, an amendment to the state constitution that was modeled on the language of the Civil Right Act of 1964.