Who Is Ralph W. Conner and Why Is He At CORE-Chicago?
Ralph W. Conner was born in Maywood Illinois. He was reared during the 1960’s social turmoil in America. As a college student during the Martin Luther King riots and Democratic Convention riots in Chicago, Conner was directly engaged in movement activity including peripheral activities involving black student support for Fred Hampton of Maywood, Illinois (who became martyr for Black Panther Party in Chicago.) Finding solace in black nationalism after the demise of the leftist Marxist-Leninist BPP, Conner became a Pan-Africanist relocating to Atlanta, Georgia and working with the Atlanta Urban League under the Nixon Black Capitalism programs designed to spur entrepreneurship among African-Americans. He started two local businesses: “Cut Clip and Clean”, a landscaping and maintenance company with five employees, and “Inner City Movers” a local moving company. Conner became involved with the Small Business Administration and studied the rudiments of financing and recordkeeping for profit. He later relocated back to Chicago to re-enroll in Roosevelt University to study accounting, business administration, marketing and advertising, and real estate development.
It was during his Atlanta phase that Conner became exposed to CORE and Roy Innis. Innis had recently emerged as a folk hero amongst black nationalist, Marcus Garvey-junkies, and academics who were studying the Ugandan experiment under Idi Amin. During that era prior to the many abuses of the Amin administration, there was a great romance between Africans in America and Africans on the continent Mother Land. Innis represented demands for trade and economic development as a prelude and in lieu of reparations. Amin called for dual citizenship for black Americans. The persona of Chairman Roy Innis was dignified, defiant, militant and resolute. He was well respected amongst the pantheon of nationalists and Pan-Africanists. He was pushing Richard Nixon Keynesian black capitalism, and he was a friend of the Republicans based upon his conservative outlook.
In the late 1970’s Ralph Conner became an employee of the Village of Maywood, an inner-ring suburb of Chicago founded in 1869. His first position was commercial loan specialist where he continued his training with the National Development Council (NDC) economic development professional municipal training programs. In 1981 he was certified as an economic development professional by Robert Davenport, current Chairman and CEO of the National Development Council.
After serving as Economic development director for Maywood, Conner became the Enterprise Zone Administrator, and the director of Planning and Development for the village. He later served a Building Commissioner and staff for the Zoning and Board of Appeals Board. After 15 years of employment in local government, Conner entered the private sector as an entrepreneur again. He became a real estate broker, and a real estate consultant operating as Conner and Associates. He got an insurance license to sell life and health and disability insurance. He started an environmental consulting firm to develop the industrial park of the future using green technologies. He worked with staff at the US- EPA on the President’s Council for Sustainability during the Clinton-Gore administration. Ultimately Conner became a brownfield’s consultant working for Wang Engineering in Chicago.
In early 1998, Conner relocated to Oak Ridge Tennessee under contract through Wang Engineering to promote environment cleanup in areas contaminated by radio-nuclides. He landed a contract with Lockheed Martin Energy Systems and Morris Brown College of Atlanta to develop a business model for minority educational institutions to become involved in technology transfer and commercialization. He visited all nine HBCU’s that were 1890 land grant institutions, including Tuskegee University in Alabama. The study on intellectual property licensing and wealth creation for black entrepreneurs is utilized today at several minority institutions.
Ralph W. Conner ran for Mayor of the Village of Maywood in 2000, capturing the mayor’s office in April of 2001. He served as village president until April 2005. Since his loss, he has run for Proviso Township Assessor, and Cook County Assessor (he received 250,000 votes in the third largest county in America.)
In April 2005, Conner was hired by the Heartland Institute as its public affairs director. His prior relationship with the libertarian free market think tank which serves as a national nonprofit public policy research organization was in 1994. In 1994 he was hired by the Heartland Institute and a coalition of school choice advocates to perform community outreach in minority inner-city communities to support the school voucher movement in Illinois.
Conner later was appointed government relations manager where he was responsible for disseminating free market research data to the legislatures in all 50 states. He was transitioned into the local legislation manager position with the expansion of Heartland Institute’s GR department in 2007, the position he currently holds full-time.
Conner became involved with CORE while working with CORE senior advisors on the issue of using DDT in Africa to eliminate malarial mosquitoes which kills millions each year. He later became involved with the United Nations/USA in Chicago, appointed to its board of directors His involvement led to support for CORE’s involvement with global warming as a public policy issue. The Heartland Institute distributed and printed 30,000 copies of the Roy Innis book, “Energy Keepers, Energy Killers”, which frames the arguments for the 21st century economic civil rights movement: Stop the War on the Poor by denying access to affordable energy resources. Conner and Heartland Institute joined the Alliance to Stop the War on the Poor in time for demonstrations at both 2008 major political party nominating conventions.
A libertarian, a patriot, a limited government proponent, a free market capitalist, an ardent supporter of African Free Trade Agreements, Conner is currently working to expand the CORE-Chicago network to involve the University of Chicago (where CORE was founded in 1942) and local African-American churches in CORE programs to assist ex-offenders in starting their own businesses to avert recidivism, create self-employment, and provide new jobs and economic development in the inner-cities of Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Louis. CORE-Chicago will organize the church community to promote the message of economic rights and access to affordable energy, and free trade agreements for African countries to heal themselves with both aid and trade.
