Ralph Neas

Ralph G. Neas (born May 17, 1946 in Brookline, Massachusetts; and raised primarily in St. Charles, Illinois), has devoted his career to equal opportunity issues with a focus on civil rights and affordable health care. He is best known for directing more than two dozen national campaigns that marshaled strong bipartisan majorities to strengthen and protect the nation's civil rights laws during the Reagan-Bush presidencies; and for chairing the national coalition that helped defeat the U.S. Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork.

Senator Edward Kennedy, in 1995, in a Senate floor statement called Neas "the 101st Senator for Civil Rights." That same week, Senator Carol Mosely-Braun (D-Il)--the first African-American woman elected to the U.S. Senate—called Neas "one of our Nation's foremost civil rights leaders."

Neas has served as Executive Director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights; the President and CEO of People For the American Way (PFAW) and the PFAW Foundation; President and CEO of the National Coalition on Health Care; and President and CEO of the Generic Pharmaceutical Association (GPhA). He served for eight years as Chief Legislative Assistant to Republican Senators Edward W. Brooke (Mass) and David Durenberger (Minn) and remained a Republican until October 1996.

The Neas family moved from New England to St.Charles, Illinois in 1955 where Neas' father, Ralph, Sr, began his career as a salesman for the American Brass Company; growing up in St. Charles, a town of approximately 12,000 people 40 miles west of Chicago, with one African American family, and attending Marmion Military Academy, a high school run by Benedictine monks and U.S. Army personnel, Neas had little direct contact with a rapidly changing political world. Influencing Neas significantly in the years before he left for college and law school were his parents, the teachings of Vatican II, his love for baseball, the civil rights movement, and the lessons he learned at Marmion.

Neas graduated from Marmion Military Academy (Aurora Illinois) in 1964. He earned a B.A. with honors from the University of Notre Dame in 1968; and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School in 1971.

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