RN

by Richard Nixon

  By the end of October 1969, a contract was awarded that put the plan into effect for six construction unions working on a federally funded hospital in Philadelphia. What became known as the Philadelphia Plan was soon extended to building trades unions in New York, Pittsburgh, Seattle, Los Angeles, St. Louis, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, and Detroit.

  George Meany hit the roof, charging that the administration was making the unions a whipping boy and trying to score “brownie points” with civil rights groups. Union lobbyists applied tremendous political power and pressure to members of Congress, and damaging amendments were adopted by the Senate. We carried the battle to the floor of both houses. Eventually, due in large part to the leadership of Jerry Ford and Hugh Scott, our efforts paid off. Both the Senate and House rejected the amendments, which would have gutted the Philadelphia Plan.

  Getting the plan written into law turned out to be easier than implementing the law. There were some initial successes, but I was disappointed that we received only lukewarm support from most of the national black leaders, who tended either to minimize the results we had achieved, or to complain that we had not gone far enough. Once again I had to wonder whether the black leadership was not more interested in dramatic tokenism than in the hard fight for actual progress.

  An important area where we were able to make a considerable impact was in the field of minority business enterprise. During the 1968 campaign I had delivered a radio address entitled “Bridges to Human Dignity” in which I urged new efforts to bring members of minority groups into the economic mainstream. Unless they were to be a permanent inferior economic class apart from other Americans, we had to find ways to give qualified blacks and other minorities a stake in the American private enterprise system. During the transition period I delegated this responsibility to Secretary of Commerce Maurice Stans and told him that I considered it to be of the highest priority. The statistics demonstrate that while we did not attain all the goals we set for ourselves, we made substantial progress in this area.

  When I entered office in 1969, minority enterprises were getting only $8 million of business through government contracts. By 1972 they were getting $242 million. In the same period the total of all government grants, loans, and guarantees directed toward helping minority business enterprises had jumped from $200 million to $472 million. Of the 100 largest black-owned businesses in 1975, more than two-thirds had been formed since 1968. Most important, all of this activity was reflected at the cash register, where receipts of black-owned businesses jumped from $4.5 billion in 1968 to $7.2 billion in 1972.

  The most explosive of the civil rights issues during my presidency were the questions of school desegregation and busing. Fifteen years had passed since the Supreme Court handed down its landmark decision that laws requiring segregated schools were unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education. After the Brown decision, segregation by law—de jure segregation—was illegal as well as wrong; where it could be proved to exist, the law could be used to stop it. It was more difficult to deal with the problem of unequal education for black and white students because of segregation which existed, not as a result of conscious discrimination by law, but as the natural outgrowth of economic and social patterns within individual communities and neighborhoods—de facto segregation.

  Despite a great deal of rhetoric and a few highly publicized symbolic confrontations during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, very little progress was made in ending the dual school system in the South. When I came into office in January 1969, 68 percent of black children in the South were still going to all-black schools and 78.8 percent were going to schools that were 80 percent or more black.

  The question in 1969 was whether the courts should try to correct the remnants of de jure segregation, which existed primarily in the South, by forcibly mixing the races in the schools. The principal tool by which this was to be accomplished was busing, whereby schoolchildren would be put on buses and driven to different schools within the district until the racial balance in each school reflected the racial balance in the community as a whole. One alternative to busing was for Congress to provide money to upgrade inferior education wherever it existed and thereby remedy the problem without disrupting the neighborhood school.

  I wanted to eliminate the last vestiges of segregation by law, and I wanted to do it in a way that treated all parts of the nation equally. I was determined that the South would not continue to be a scapegoat for Northern liberals. I was not willing, however, to impose wholesale busing, because I believe strongly in the neighborhood school. Even more important, I do not believe that schoolchildren should be torn from their home environments and, solely because of their race, be forced to go to distant schools where they might not be welcome or even safe. Compulsory segregation was wrong; but compulsory racial balancing was also wrong.

  I believed that with the right approach we could persuade people in the South and elsewhere not just to obey the law because it was the law, but gradually to bring them to an understanding and acceptance of the wisdom and humanity that lay behind it. In the meantime, I felt that as long as the law was not being deliberately disobeyed, the federal government should be an instrument of persuasion rather than an engine of coercion; the President should be the conciliator rather than the divider.

  I felt that, to the greatest extent possible, plans for desegregation should be made by school boards, local communities, and the courts in each area or region, rather than by bureaucrats in HEW in Washington.

  Many school districts decided not to forestall the inevitable and simply complied with the desegregation deadlines which had been laid down by the Supreme Court in 1968. Some districts decided to resist any change and submitted proposals for delays that were patently obstructionist. We rejected a number of these proposals and cut off federal funds. Others, however, tried to find solutions in responsible and responsive ways, and we planned to grant these districts limited and supervised delays.

  But on October 29, 1969, just as the school year was getting under way, the Supreme Court handed down a unanimous decision that required every school district to terminate segregated school systems at once. I felt that the Court had set a deadline that was unrealistic and would be impossible to meet, but I had no choice other than to enforce the ruling.

  At my next press conference I was asked about my policy on school desegregation. I replied that it was “to carry out what the Supreme Court has laid down. I believe in carrying out the law even though I may have disagreed as I did in this instance with the decree.”

  I felt obliged to uphold the law; but I did not feel obliged to do any more than the minimum the law required, while hoping that the Court would eventually see how its well-intentioned ruling was both legally and socially counterproductive. One thing I was determined to ensure was that the many young liberal lawyers in HEW and in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division would not treat this decision as a carte blanche for them to run wild through the South enforcing compliance with extreme or punitive requirements they had formulated in Washington.

  The Court’s February deadline for immediate desegregation passed without incident. Some of the remaining segregated schools complied; some closed down; others ignored it and waited to see what would happen. Even before that, George Wallace had urged the South to defy the federal government and talked about running for President in 1972. A national Gallup poll found that more than half of those responding felt that school integration was going too fast.

  I appointed a Cabinet Committee on Education to consider the problem at the highest level. I told them, “First of all I want everyone, but especially the Negro leaders, to know that our motto around here is ‘I care.’ The President cares about the situation and he plans to do something about it. The important thing, however, is to keep things in their proper perspective. Once we have made it clear that the law is being upheld and no segregation is legal anywhere in the country, I think we should take into account the possibility that
local communities, black and white, might want to keep a certain degree of separation. That’s why I want to put our federal money into the best possible education in each school. We’ve got to stop using the classrooms and the kids as the cutting edges for social and economic problems that will have to be solved elsewhere. Our goal should be education, not litigation.”

  A week later, Senator Richard Russell of Georgia came to the White House to transmit the views of four Southern governors that HEW bureaucrats were going around the South stirring up trouble and inciting suits. “I don’t know what I’d do in your place, Mr. President,” my ailing friend said. “I only know you’ve got a problem that won’t go away and will get worse unless you do something about it. The people of Georgia are more worked up over this problem than anything I’ve seen in all of my years in politics.”

  I decided that the time had come to issue a major policy statement from the White House. On March 24 I released an 8,000-word statement covering every aspect of the civil rights issue. I reaffirmed my support for desegregation and my opposition to busing; I also indicated that the primary reliance should be on cooperation with local authorities and on voluntary compliance with the law rather than on federal involvement and enforcement. I said that my first priority would be maintaining and improving the quality of public education, and I announced that I would request $1.5 billion over two years for helping school districts desegregate. Reaction to this statement split between those who wanted to coerce the South to comply with the Court’s ruling and those who were willing to take a chance on persuasion.

  I was convinced that involvement on the part of local leaders and officials was the first prerequisite for a successful policy of persuasion. At the suggestion of my Cabinet Committee, seven of the Southern states which were still in various degrees of noncompliance with the Court’s ruling formed State Advisory Committees on school desegregation. On June 24 I met with the Mississippi State Advisory Committee in the White House; there were fifteen members, nine whites and six blacks. One of the black members said to me, “The day before yesterday I was in jail for going to the wrong beach. Today, Mr. President, I am meeting you. If that’s possible anything can happen.”

  Over the next few weeks I met with all of the other state committees, and with each of them I stressed the same points. First, I condemned the hypocrisy in much of the North about the segregation problem. I affirmed my belief that the South should be treated with understanding and patience, but I also stressed the need to solve the problem through peaceful compliance. Second, I emphasized my commitment to the principle of local leadership to solve local problems. I got across subtly but unmistakably the point that if they did not act to solve the problem I would be forced to act to carry out my responsibility to enforce the law of the land.

  Most of the whites who attended these meetings believed that the Court’s decision was wrong; and some of the blacks entered the meetings with a skeptical view because they thought that only strong federal intervention would bring about compliance with the law. The meetings showed that it was possible for both sides to meet and talk about their concerns.

  I knew that I was walking a fine line between the instant integrationists and the segregation-forever extremists, but I felt that the risk would be well worth it if we could solve the problem without getting the federal government involved.

  At the end of July, I received a long memorandum from Harry Dent, my Southern political liaison man. He wrote that there was “a dangerous, growing concern in the Southern and conservative political communities—a concern that the administration is heading left in an effort to quiet those who have been against the administration.” He said there was a feeling that “ ‘the squeaky wheel gets the grease’ ” and that at a recent meeting most of the Southern Republican chairmen had expressed the feeling that “We’ve been good guys too long and have gotten nothing but rhetoric while the bad guys have been in the streets getting all the attention and action.”

  On August 6, the same day that the Georgia State Advisory Committee came to the White House, I met with the leading conservative senators and Southern Republicans, including Ed Gurney of Florida, Barry Goldwater, Strom Thurmond, and John Tower. They complained bitterly that the administration had turned sharply to the left on the civil rights issue. Demands were made that I fire Jerris Leonard, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, and others who had been working to implement my policies. I listened to them and told them I was actually restraining bureaucrats from HEW and the Justice Department who wanted to move more aggressively, and in my opinion irresponsibly, on the South. At the same time I emphasized that I had a responsibility to carry out the law of the land and that I was determined to meet that responsibility.

  On August 14 I flew to New Orleans to join the Louisiana State Advisory Committee, which was holding its first meeting. Before I arrived the members had become hopelessly deadlocked. After talking to each one individually, I was able to convince them of the need for progress and they agreed to make another try.

  As the beginning of the new school year approached, tension began to mount. Would my faith in the power of persuasion be justified? Or would federal troops have to be called out to enforce integration?

  At the end of August I personally asked Billy Graham to record some TV appeals in support of voluntary compliance. He made a videotape that was shown in all the Southern states, and I am convinced it had a very positive and powerful influence.

  To my great relief, the policy worked. Schools in the South and all across the country opened in the fall of 1970 without violence and in compliance with the Supreme Court’s order. The dramatic success of our Southern school desegregation program is eloquently told by the statistics. By 1974 only 8 percent of black children in the South were attending all-black schools, down from 68 percent in the fall of 1968.

  My personal philosophy regarding the problem of busing and civil rights issues generally was set forth in detail in a memorandum I wrote to John Ehrlichman on January 28, 1972:

  I begin with the proposition that freedom of choice in housing, education, and jobs must be the right of every American. My support for family assistance, even though I have serious doubts as to whether it will work, is primarily based on the conclusion that only by such a program does freedom of choice have any chance to become a reality for millions of families who live below the poverty line. By freedom of choice of course I mean in the deepest philosophical sense and not in the narrow obstructionist sense that the term was used in fighting the school cases in the South in 1966–67 and 68. Legally segregated education, legally segregated housing, legal obstructions to equal employment must be totally removed.

  On the other hand I am convinced that while legal segregation is totally wrong, forced integration of housing or education is just as wrong.

  I realize that this position will lead us to a situation in which blacks will continue to live for the most part in black neighborhoods and where there will be predominantly black schools and predominantly white schools in the metropolitan areas. While I cannot go as far as Scammon in contending that those who insist on forced integrated education are really practicing white supremacy there is unfortunately a grain of truth in it. . . .

  In any event I believe there may be some doubt as to the validity of the Brown philosophy that integrating education will pull up the blacks and not pull down the whites. But while there may be some doubt as to whether segregated education is inferior there is no doubt whatever on another point—that education requiring excessive transportation for students is definitely inferior. I come down hard and unequivocally against busing for the purpose of racial balance. . . .

  Having made all these points I come down hard on another point which I think is absolutely overriding. This country is not ready at this time for either forcibly integrated housing or forcibly integrated education. . . .

  We simply have to face the hard fact the law cannot go beyond what the people are willing to sup
port. This is true insofar as Prohibition is concerned. It is far more true with regard to education and even more true with regard to housing where economic considerations enter the picture. . . .

  We cannot sweep this issue under the rug. It is going to explode all over the landscape during this next year. . . . My feelings on race as you know are if anything ultraliberal. But I cannot duck the responsibility for coming down on the side which is right. . . . Even if I should become convinced—and I don’t think it would be possible to convince me—that forced integration of education and housing was in the best interests of blacks and not too detrimental to whites I could not possibly support it in good conscience. What I am saying through this memorandum, is that as a matter of conscience I have reached a conclusion motivated not by politics but by my considered evaluation of all the issues involved, that I must speak to these two controversial issues now firmly without equivocation and if necessary through the advocacy of a constitutional amendment.

  Although I considered the idea of a constitutional amendment at that time, I now believe that it would have exacerbated the already volatile issues of integrated education and housing with which we were confronted.

  Personally I had always felt that the real issue in school desegregation was that of quality education. In my opinion, the Brown decision was based on the principle that the dual school system in the South was wrong not because segregation was wrong per se, but because in practice it produced Negro schools that were educationally inferior. To my mind, subsequent Court decisions have muddied the waters by assuming, incorrectly, that the issue involved race rather than education. I simply do not believe that education is the great leveler of social barriers that it was thought to be by the framers of the Great Society programs. I feel that home environment has more to do with success in life than has any amount of integrated education; busing black children from poor families to richer white schools will have little effect on how they learn.