]]> http://thenewnixon.org/2010/04/29/dorothy-height-1912-2010/feed/ 0 http://thenewnixon.org/2010/03/24/3-24-70/ http://thenewnixon.org/2010/03/24/3-24-70/#comments Wed, 24 Mar 2010 20:33:08 +0000 Frank Gannon http://thenewnixon.org/?p=23586 Forty years ago today, RN issued a Statement About Desegregation of Elementary and Secondary Schools.

The almost 17,000-word document surveyed the the issue beginning with the first Brown decision in 1954.  Clearly, and in very plain language, the President surveyed the history and set out his Administration’s position:

This issue is not partisan. It is not sectional. It is an American issue, of direct and immediate concern to every citizen.

I hope that this statement will reduce the prevailing confusion and will help place public discussion of the issue on a more rational and realistic level in all parts of the Nation. It is time to strip away the hypocrisy, the prejudice, and the ignorance that too long have characterized discussion of this issue.’

He described his underlying approach:

We are dealing fundamentally with inalienable human rights, some of them constitutionally protected. The final arbiter of constitutional questions is the United States Supreme Court.

And he set out his specific objectives:

–To reaffirm my personal belief that the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education was right in both constitutional and human terms.

–To assess our progress in the 16 years since Brown and to point the way to
continuing progress.

–To clarify the present state of the law, as developed by the courts and the Congress, and the administration policies guided by it.

–To discuss some of the difficulties encountered by courts and communities as desegregation has accelerated in recent years, and to suggest approaches that can mitigate such problems as we complete the process of compliance with Brown.

–To place the question of school desegregation in its larger context, as part of America’s historic commitment to the achievement of a free and open society.

RN was obviously aware of the widespread criticism regarding what conventional wisdom had decided was his “Southern strategy” regarding race relations.  He addressed this with some home truths:

We should bear very carefully in mind, therefore, the distinction between educational difficulty as a result of race, and educational difficulty as a result of social or economic levels, of family background, of cultural patterns, or simply of bad schools. Providing better education for the disadvantaged requires a more sophisticated approach than mere racial mathematics.

In this same connection, we should recognize that a smug paternalism has characterized the attitudes of many white Americans toward school questions. There has been an implicit assumption that blacks or others of minority races would be improved by association with whites. The notion that an all-black or predominantly-black school is automatically inferior to one which is all- or predominantly-white—even though not a product of a dual system inescapably carries racist overtones. And, of course, we know of hypocrisy: not a few of those in the North most stridently demanding racial integration of public schools in the South at the same time send their children to private schools to avoid the assumed inferiority of mixed public schools.

It is unquestionably true that most black schools–though by no means all–are in fact inferior to most white schools. This is due in part to past neglect or shortchanging of the black schools; and in part to long-term patterns of racial discrimination which caused a greater proportion of Negroes to be left behind educationally, left out culturally, and trapped in low paying jobs. It is not really because they serve black children that most of these schools are inferior, but rather because they serve poor children who often lack the home environment that encourages learning.

This comprehensive, thoughtful, and vital document deserves attention.  It can be read in full here.  The Nixon administration’s pivotal role in the desegregation of America’s schools will be the subject of the Nixon Legacy Forum in September.

When Brown [after Election Day 1968] entered the room where Nixon was holding court, the president-elect introduced him to everyone as, “One of my new assistants.”

When the others left, Nixon got down to business.

“He said, ‘I know you weren’t looking for a job. I need you. There will be no impediments to our relationship … you will have access and in Washington everything is built around access.’ He said if you want to get anything done, you’ve got to go to Washington. He said if you want to get done all those notes you sent me, you’ve got to come to Washington with me.”

And from his office in the White House complex — with four secretaries and three assistants — Brown went about fulfilling some of those promises, and other needs he saw firsthand, such as finding a funding tap for financially struggling black colleges trying to educate future leaders[...]

Nixon, who Brown said got little recognition for efforts to improve race relations, always backed him up.

“He trusted my judgment,” Brown said.

Brown wouldn’t change a thing about his time on staff with Nixon.

“It was four years and two months of incredible,” he said.

On the campaign trail in 1968, Nixon lambasted his Democratic opponent, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, for the failed Great Society programs and big government spending. Nixon told reporters that he resented anyone who said that law and order was a code word for racism. The majority of Americans, he explained, were decent, hard working, law abiding citizens. They were sick of the lawlessness and violence in the cities. They were furious at the courts for the perceived cuddling of (black) lawbreakers. Nixon claimed he was the candidate who spoke for white ethnics and blue-collar workers.

He accurately gauged the mood of the “silent majority.” The urban riots convinced many whites in the south and the northern suburbs that the ghettos were out of control and that their lives and property were threatened by the menace of black violence. In speeches to northern suburban audiences, Nixon hammered on the twin themes of law and order, and Great Society permissiveness.

Hutchinson’s tone indicates that he is well short on the facts and that he hopes we rely on his translation of “code word” to fill the void for his inability to provide any cogency to his argument.

According to historian Joan Hoff in her book Nixon Reconsidered, RN had a stronger legacy on racial issues than his predecessors and the effects of his policies serve as the bedrock for his successors.

In 1969, RN instituted a revised version of President Johnson’s Philadelphia Plan, requiring federal contractors to hire minority workers for construction related jobs.

In 1972, he expanded the power of the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Also in 1972, he signed an extension of the Voting Rights Act, legislation that effectively banned literacy tests and created a uniform protocol for residency requirements that ALL states had to abide by.

According to Hoff, African Americans also benefited from the administration’s small business initiatives which RN tailored for minorities so that they would have “a profitable role in our economic system.” The results: “56 of the top 100 black  firms” were started between 1969 and 1971.

And by the end of his first term, less than 12 percent of African American children attended segregated schools nationwide, down from 40 percent in 1968.

These are just the facts. Then again, we can always rely on Mr. Hutchinson’s interpretations.

Unfortunately, in analyzing the GOP’s alienation from black voters, Parker repeats the old canard that the African-American exodus from the GOP began in 1968 in response to what she describes as, “Richard Nixon’s ‘Southern strategy,’ which tried to harness votes by cultivating white resentment toward blacks.” At quick glance at a little history refutes this persistent and pernicious myth.

For its first 70 years , the Republican Party – the Party of Lincoln – was the home of the vast majority of African-American voters. FDR was the first Democratic president to win the support of a majority of black voters. Nevertheless, Republican presidential candidates in every election through 1960 could expect to receive the support of roughly one-third of black voters. Indeed, in 1960, about one in every three African-Americans voters voted for Richard Nixon.

It wasn’t until 1964 that African-American support for the GOP fell off the cliff. Barry Goldwater’s vote against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (which, ironically, was supported by larger proportions of Republicans than Democrats in both houses of Congress) drove black voter supporter for the GOP standard-bearer down below ten percent. In the years since, it has rarely climbed much above that mark and has never come close to the level RN received in 1960.

Goldwater, of course, carried much of the Deep South in 1964 (Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina), all five of which the Democrats had carried in 1960. But, with the exception of his home state of Arizona, that’s all he won. New York Senator Jacob Javits, writing in early 1966 about the electoral debacle of 1964, blamed it squarely on “the Goldwater-Miller ill-fated ‘Southern Strategy.’”

Over the years, however, RN’s critics have blamed him for creating a “Southern Strategy” designed to win white votes by exploiting racial tensions.   If that had been his aim, the results of the 1968 election suggest he failed at it miserably. In 1968, RN lost four of the five Southern states that Goldwater had carried. George Wallace carried the rest of the Goldwater Southern bloc – Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi. And of those four states, RN ran third, behind both Wallace and the Democrat’s nominee, Hubert Humphrey, in three of them.

Once in the White House, President Nixon’s actions can hardly be called those of a president seeking to inflame racial tensions. Nothing illustrates that better than the historic progress his administration achieved in finally ending the practice of segregating the races in “separate but equal” schools in the South. When RN took office in 1969, 68 percent of black Southern students attended segregated schools. Within five years, that number had been cut to 9 percent. As Tom Wicker wrote in his biography, One of Us, “The Nixon administration did more in 1970 to desegregate Southern school systems than had been done in the sixteen previous years, or probably since.”

Of course, beginning in 1972, the Democrat’s once Solid South turned reliably red at the presidential level, except when a Son of the South was running for president (Carter in 1976 and Clinton in 1992). The lock the Democrats had on Southern Senate and House seats also began to erode during the Nixon years.

The reasons for this change are many. Chief among them is RN’s success in occupying the middle ground in American politics and thus attracting the support of Silent Majority, not just in the South, but also in every part of America. Attributing the Republican Party’s success in breaking the Democrat’s hold on the South to a cynical, Nixon-devised  “Southern Strategy” based on creating and then exploiting racial division is not only simplistic, it’s also contradicted by the record.

Potomac, Md.: Do you think President Obama should have weighed in on this issue?

Robert J. Brown: I think that it would’ve been better if he had given it a little more thought and gotten a little bit more advice and counsel; however, I think the way he has handled it so far has been brilliant. I also feel that there’s a great sincerity about President Obama in this field because he has been confronted by the same kinds of inequities that most black people have been faced with. So naturally he would have the kind of sensitivity that no other president has ever had.

_______________________

Atlanta, Ga.: Should there be a national set of procedures for police conduct and procedures

Robert J. Brown: Most police departments have rules and regulations and codes of conduct already. The problem is that many of them don’t have the kind of sophistication, the training, etc., and that’s a problem. I recall many years ago when we were having huge racial problems in the country there was established a huge community relations department in the Justice Department in Washington. The first director of that department was Gov. Leroy Collins of Florida. I think some variation is probably needed now as much as it was then but in a much more sophisticated way.

Back then you had a lot of demonstrations in the street and much violence but today it’s more subtle but it’s still there and we’re still grappling with it. It has not gone away and there need to be some major ways to deal with it.

Q: What do you think about Judge Sotomayor’s frank remarks that she is a product of affirmative action?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: So am I. I was the first tenured woman at Columbia. That was 1972, every law school was looking for its woman. Why? Because Stan Pottinger, who was then head of the office for civil rights of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, was enforcing the Nixon government contract program. Every university had a contract, and Stan Pottinger would go around and ask, How are you doing on your affirmative-action plan? William McGill, who was then the president of Columbia, was asked by a reporter: How is Columbia doing with its affirmative action? He said, It’s no mistake that the two most recent appointments to the law school are a woman and an African-American man.

Q: And was that you?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: I was the woman. I never would have gotten that invitation from Columbia without the push from the Nixon administration. I understand that there is a thought that people will point to the affirmative-action baby and say she couldn’t have made it if she were judged solely on the merits. But when I got to Columbia I was well regarded by my colleagues even though they certainly disagreed with many of the positions that I was taking. They backed me up: If that’s what I thought, I should be able to speak my mind.

On gay marriage, one said to me: “That’s not civil rights; that’s a civil wrong.”

Over and over I heard people carving the controversy in their fashion: Civil rights and discrimination are matters of laws; marriage is a matter for God and preachers.

“You cannot order me through legislation to recognize gay marriage,” one friend told me. “Marriage is between God and man.”

Obama attorney general attacks Americans

and the headline is:

Obama’s attorney general claims US is ‘voluntarily segregated”

General Holder’s speech —made to mark Black History Month at DOJ— has already received considerable coverage.  The headlines and soundbites haven’t misrepresented what he said, but it’s a long speech and it’s worth reading in toto; context makes it no less blunt but somewhat more nuanced.

One reason this speech was so surprising was because it doesn’t seem quite to jibe with the General’s remarks at his swearing in just a couple of weeks ago.  Perhaps then he was wearing his optimist’s hat and viewing the glass as half full; maybe yesterday’s speech described the rest of the glass as viewed from under a different hat.

The more interesting question is: Why?  From whose playbook —and at what page— is General Holder working?

The operative document on this subject should be —now and for some time to come— Barack Obama’s seminal speech in Philadelphia last March, that managed to be critical and objective without being divisive or a downer.

The Obama campaign was notable and admirable for its positivity and discipline.  In its less than a month in office, the Obama administration has been beset by diffusions of focus and breakdowns of discipline —and if they keep up much longer it will be plagued by them.

Despite some serious battering the Era of Feeling Good that lasted from the election through the inauguration still persists, and that is a good thing for all of us.   But General Holder’s speech isn’t likely to help prolong it, and that is not a good thing for any of us.

William Zantsinger died last Saturday; his death is reported in today’s papers.

Hattie Carroll lives on.

The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll

William Zanzinger killed poor Hattie Carroll
With a cane that he twirled around his diamond ring finger
At a Baltimore hotel society gath’rin’.
And the cops were called in and his weapon took from him
As they rode him in custody down to the station
And booked William Zanzinger for first-degree murder.
But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears,
Take the rag away from your face.
Now ain’t the time for your tears.

William Zanzinger, who at twenty-four years
Owns a tobacco farm of six hundred acres
With rich wealthy parents who provide and protect him
And high office relations in the politics of Maryland,
Reacted to his deed with a shrug of his shoulders
And swear words and sneering, and his tongue it was snarling,
In a matter of minutes on bail was out walking.
But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears,
Take the rag away from your face.
Now ain’t the time for your tears.

Hattie Carroll was a maid of the kitchen.
She was fifty-one years old and gave birth to ten children
Who carried the dishes and took out the garbage
And never sat once at the head of the table
And didn’t even talk to the people at the table
Who just cleaned up all the food from the table
And emptied the ashtrays on a whole other level,
Got killed by a blow, lay slain by a cane
That sailed through the air and came down through the room,
Doomed and determined to destroy all the gentle.
And she never done nothing to William Zanzinger.
But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears,
Take the rag away from your face.
Now ain’t the time for your tears.

In the courtroom of honor, the judge pounded his gavel
To show that all’s equal and that the courts are on the level
And that the strings in the books ain’t pulled and persuaded
And that even the nobles get properly handled
Once that the cops have chased after and caught ‘em
And that the ladder of law has no top and no bottom,
Stared at the person who killed for no reason
Who just happened to be feelin’ that way without warnin’.
And he spoke through his cloak, most deep and distinguished,
And handed out strongly, for penalty and repentance,
William Zanzinger with a six-month sentence.
Oh, but you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears,
Bury the rag deep in your face
For now’s the time for your tears.

No wonder the Episcopal Church is in trouble.  Dioceses continue to make the difficult but principled decision to leave the US Episcopal Church, setting themselves up for protracted and expensive legal battles.  Meanwhile, Episcopal leaders just don’t get it.

The Bishop of Los Angeles, Jon Bruno, called Proposition 8 “a lamentable expression of fear-based discrimination that attempts to deny the constitutional rights of some Californians on the basis of sexual orientation.”

Other California bishops said the vote to uphold traditional marriage demonstrated a “fear of human sexuality,” and that Californians were driven by “fear, prejudice and injustice.”

As David Virtue writes on his website… “These bishops don’t give enough credit to the distinctions Americans can and are able to make.  Americans can reject racism and vote for a black president and at the same time uphold Christian standards for marriage…What Californians said was ‘no’ to gay marriage which they said is not marriage at all, either in God’s eyes or the state’s.”

Self-styled Christian traditionalists are prone to criticize the mainline denominations for toadying to people’s cultural and political whims. They proclaim that the gospel should stand as a rock against fickle fashion. Yet here Virtue invests the electorate with powers of keen discernment, rejecting racism while hewing thoughtfully to traditional marriage.

But how stood those wise voters with racism in 1860? And in Mississippi, for instance, in 1954? In each era, some in the church were opposing slavery and Jim Crow — some, but not all. A question for today’s witnesses is how our views, statements, and actions vis a vis our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters will be viewed in 50 years.

[I]f you are interested in what being president is like, look at the day 45 years ago, Aug. 28, 1963, when Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. That made Kennedy realize that his historical destiny would be to put the government on the side of a minority, no small thing in a democracy of majority rule. Until that day, Kennedy had never allowed himself to be photographed with King, who was seen, rather suspiciously, as a man of the left.

That day, he invited the black minister to the White House. Waiting for King to arrive, Kennedy met with the National Security Council and signed off on a plot to depose President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam, an action that turned that far country into an American military colony — an action that led to disaster.

Today is the 45th anniversary of the March on Washington in 1963 — during which Dr. King delivered his “I have a dream” speech.

Among the famous faces there that day were Jackie Robinson (with his son David);  also Charlton Heston, James Baldwin, Marlon Brando, and Harry Belafonte.

Joan Baez performed.  As did Bob Dylan and Peter, Paul and Mary.

Odetta sang her stirring “Spiritual Trilogy” of “Oh Freedom,” “Come Along With Me,” and “I’m On My Way”.

You can listen to part of her performance on this excellent WGBH audio documentary. (Click on “Audio” at the bottom of the page.  Then forward to 6:00.  Don’t be mislead by the title —the song  is “Come Along With Me”.)

It will be the fulfillment of the dream of countless Americans, of all races. One or another of the parade of orators at the Democratic National Convention in Denver is bound to point this out, or express similar sentiments.

But it will also be the fulfillment of the dream of one American, Lyndon Baines Johnson, who, were he alive, would turn 100 years old tomorrow – a man who, when he signed the Civil Rights Act into law in 1964 after getting it through Congress by means of heroic persuasion, cajoling, and pressure, did as much as any single person to bring into being a world in which Sen. Barack Obama could become President of the United States.

But I wonder if anyone – in the nominating and seconding speeches for Obama, or Sen Hillary Clinton, or in the rest of the oratory tomorrow – will take note of this? Are leading Democrats willing to acknowledge that, no matter how they feel about how LBJ handled Vietnam, his legacy deserves recognition, even if some who have laid claim to it have later cast it aside without a murmur of apology?

Apart from a round of speeches in Congress last May, Washington has done little this year to note Lyndon B. Johnson’s 100th birthday. Nor has it received much attention in the national media, apart from Hillel Italie’s AP interview with Robert Caro, in which it turns out that he is, maybe, halfway through the fourth and, supposedly, final volume of his biography of Johnson, which indicates that Knopf may publish it sometime around 2015.

Most of what interest there has been in the anniversary has come out of Texas, including this reminiscence by LBJ’s aide Harry Middleton, and various columns and articles in the Lone Star State’s newspapers. Tomorrow there will be a big Pedernales-style barbecue (and that makes me wonder: does the name of that mighty river evoke any kind of sensation at all in anyone under 40?) at the LBJ Library in Austin, but in Denver’s bars and hotel lounges I suspect the minds of the delegates will be on other matters. (If only Jack Valenti were still with us, to flash his smile, wield his phone, and see to it that his old boss got his due.)

I’ll leave you with the opening and closing words on President Nixon from his statement to the nation on January 22, 1973:

To President Johnson, the American Dream was not a catch phrase–it was a reality of his own life. He believed in America–in what America could mean to all of its citizens and what America could mean to the world. In the service of that faith, he gave himself completely.

In over thirty years of public life, he knew times of triumph and times of despair-he knew controversy and adulation. Yet, no matter what the mood of the moment, at the center of his public life–and at the center of his spirit–was an unshakable conviction in the essential rightness of the American experience…..

….In my Inaugural Address just two days ago I spoke of how my thoughts went back to those who stood in that place before me and of the dreams they had for America. No man had greater dreams for America than Lyndon Johnson. Even as we mourn his death, we are grateful for his life, which did so much to make those dreams into realities. And we know that as long as this Nation lives, so will his dreams and his accomplishments.

The difficulty is when people, perhaps naively, take a book like Nixonland as something it doesn’t try to be: Complete and authoritative. Scott Lemieux does just that in using Perlstein to rebut a Bruce Bartlett column which correctly credits President Nixon with civil rights breakthroughs. Lemieux writes:

To give Nixon credit for the desegregation policies he opposed is grossly ahistorical nonsense.

Actually, to ignore what actually happened in history is nonsense. Here’s George Shultz’s account of what he did to implement the President’s policy. Shultz concludes by quoting Tom Wicker:

There’s no doubt about it — the Nixon administration accomplished more in 1970 to desegregate Southern school systems than had been done in the 16 previous years, or probably since. There’s no doubt either that it was Richard Nixon personally who conceived, orchestrated and led the administration’s desegregation effort. Halting and uncertain before he finally asserted strong control, that effort resulted in probably the outstanding domestic achievement of his administration.’

Richard Nixon is said to have developed a “Southern strategy” of using racial code words like “law and order” to gain votes in the South. Yet he did more to desegregate southern schools than any president in history. Nixon also created affirmative action to help break the power of racist labor unions, and minority set-asides for government contracts to aid black entrepreneurs.