by By Douglas E. Schoen
Richard Nixon's enduring image as a political villain, his appeal to the silent majority of mostly middle-class Americans, and especially his notorious Southern strategy have contributed to a widespread view that his record on racial matters is poor. Nothing could be further from the truth. Whatever the complexities of Nixon's racial politics, his policies achieved far more than those of his great rival, John F. Kennedy, who dragged his feet on civil rights until near the end of his time in office.
Consider the tortured subject of busing. Nixon was on record opposing the forced busing of schoolchildren for the purpose of integration. At the same time, his civil rights record had been strong throughout his career. As vice president under Dwight Eisenhower, Nixon helped lead support for the 1957 Civil Rights Act - for which Martin Luther King Jr. wrote to thank him. Nixon opposed segregation. In a 1968 interview on Face the Nation, presidential candidate Nixon said that "no funds should be given to a district which practices segregation."
However, Nixon did not see busing - forced integration - as a solution to racial inequality, let alone as a way to foster harmonious relations between whites and blacks. In addition, he objected to it on the grounds of community control. After the Swann ruling upheld the constitutionality of busing, Nixon asked Congress to pass a moratorium on new court-ordered busing rulings.
Liberals blamed Nixon for his resistance to busing, but they somehow missed the astounding success he was having desegregating American schools, which was busing's main goal. When Nixon entered the White House, the desegregation of Southern schools was proceeding at a snail's pace. In 1968, nearly 70 percent of black children in the South attended all-black schools. By the time he left office, in 1974, just 8 percent did. The record is crystal clear: Richard Nixon desegregated more schools in his first term than all other presidents combined.
He accomplished this historic feat in no small part by applying Republican, conservative principles of governance, especially federalism - the philosophy that grants maximum autonomy to the states. Where desegregation was concerned, Nixon deferred to federalist principles as long as the states' efforts were consistent with federal mandates on civil rights. As the speechwriter and author Ray Price put it: "Nixon's aim was to use the minimum coercion necessary to achieve the essential national goal, to encourage local initiative, to respect diversity, and, to the extent possible, to treat the entire nation equally - blacks equally with whites, the South equally with the North."
George Shultz, who served as Nixon's secretary of labor, in a powerful New York Times op-ed in 2003 told the story of how Nixon worked to enforce the mandate of Brown v. Board of Education. In the article, Shultz described how Nixon supported this legislation - which had been flouted for nearly 20 years - by asking him and Vice President Spiro Agnew to form biracial committees in the seven affected Southern states. The idea was that white and black representatives would work together to manage the process of desegregation with minimal interference from Washington - as long as the committees understood that they had to reach some kind of workable solution, or risk federal intervention. In many instances, the whites and blacks who served together got to know and respect one another to an extent few had foreseen.
"One of the most encouraging experiences that I have had since taking office was to hear each one of these leaders from the Southern states speak honestly about the problems, not glossing over the fact that there were very grave problems," Nixon said. "As a result of these advisory committees being set up, we are going to find that in many districts the transition will be orderly and peaceful, whereas otherwise it could have been the other way."
"In the end," Shultz wrote, "the school openings were peaceful. To the amazement of almost everyone."
Nixon's administration also put together the Philadelphia Plan, a forceful federal-level initiative to guarantee fair hiring practices in construction jobs, with definitive "goals and timetables" for minority inclusion. The administration would not impose quotas, Nixon himself said, "but would require federal contractors to show 'affirmative action' to meet the goals of increasing minority employment." The plan took its name from the city in which the first test case was run. Assistant Secretary of Labor Arthur Fletcher said: "The craft unions and the construction industry are among the most egregious offenders against equal opportunity laws . . . openly hostile toward letting blacks into their closed circle."
The Philadelphia Plan was part of a broader agenda of supporting what Nixon called "black capitalism." It came at a time, several years after Dr. King's death, when the traditional civil rights paradigm seemed to have broken down amid a changed legal and political climate. Some problems had actually been solved; others remained. But the old-line civil rights leadership seemed unable to grasp the new realities, and the urban violence of the late '60s had exposed the limitations of its approach - while prompting a backlash from whites. Nixon saw support for black business efforts not only as a logical next step in black advancement but as a way to defuse racial tensions.
As Price put it, the rioting and other inner-city violence posed the danger of "hardening attitudes into a simple formula of 'it's us against them.' "
Nixon's approach sought to bring Republican values of entrepreneurialism to the black community, while also - so Nixon hoped, anyway - reaching out to blacks and demonstrating to them that Republicans also sought their advancement and wanted their support. As a result, the Office of Minority Business Enterprise, championed by Republicans, put liberal Democrats on the defensive. Black capitalism, said Graham T. Molitor, a pollster for liberal Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller of New York, was "a stroke of political genius."
Nixon showed that civil rights could be advanced in a rational, reasonable way that emphasized cooperation while de-emphasizing areas of conflict. His achievements in this area exemplify his nonideological political approach.
Douglas E. Schoen is a longtime Democratic campaign consultant and author of "The Nixon Effect: How Richard Nixon's Presidency Fundamentally Changed American Politics" (Encounter Books, 2016), from which this excerpt is taken
President Nixon's stance on the subject of school desegregation in general and busing in particular has never really been in question. Last year he eased Robert Finch, a close friend who was then Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, out of his job, in part for pressing too hard on integration. Finch's replacement, Elliot Richardson, has now been left stranded. Last week, moving abruptly to "disavow" HEW's busing plan for schools in Austin, Texas, Nixon emphatically restated his position: "I have consistently opposed the busing of our nation's schoolchildren to achieve a racial balance, and I am opposed to the busing of children simply for the sake of busing. Further, while the Executive Branch will continue to enforce the orders of the court, including court-ordered busing, I have instructed the Attorney General and the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare that they are to work with individual school districts to hold busing to the minimum required by law."
In a few terse sentences, Nixon thereby gave recalcitrant school districts in the South—and North—an official excuse for making little haste very slowly. In the Austin case, U.S. District Judge Jack Roberts had rejected the HEW proposal, which called for extensive busing; Roberts had opted instead for an alternative advanced by the local school board, which planned only intermittent busing of pupils as a sort of intramural cultural-exchange program.
Nixon conceded that the Justice Department would have to appeal Judge Roberts' decision, because the Supreme Court had upheld the principle of bus ing in a decision last April involving schools in North Carolina, Georgia and Alabama. But, he said, the Government would no longer argue for the HEW plan; instead, it would seek a compromise. Nixon also instructed Richardson to submit an amendment to prohibit use of funds from his $1.5 billion Emergency School Assistance Act for busing.
There was some reason for the Government's retreat on the Austin busing question; the HEW plan had some technical weaknesses. Still, Richardson thought he had persuaded Nixon and Attorney General John Mitchell to carry out the busing decision (TIME, Aug. 9). He was informed of the President's move at the last minute, and carried no personal plea or protest to Nixon.
Opinion v. Law. Said Minnesota's Democratic Senator Walter Mondale, who shepherded the Senate version of the school assistance bill: "I do not think that in the long term this country will reward the President for attempting to pit public opinion against the rule of law announced by the Supreme Court." In New York, the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense and Education Fund said that it may intervene in the Austin case in advocacy of the HEW plan.
On the other hand, busing opponents —especially in Texas—were displeased that the President chose to have the Justice Department press the appeal at all. Although Nixon was at considerable pains to assure Senator John Tower that the Government would proceed no further than the law absolutely requires, the crusty Texas Republican was not easily appeased. "It appears that he does not really oppose forced busing—or he lacks the resolve necessary to control those who pursue it in his name," Tower said. Austin
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School Superintendent Jack Davidson put it pithily: "Man in White House speaks with forked tongue."
Still another peculiar circumvention has been proposed by the Dallas school district. After the Supreme Court decision, one educated estimate was that the Dallas district would eventually have to spend $6,000,000 on as many as 500 new buses. Labeling that alternative too time-consuming and expensive, the district advanced what Dallas School Superintendent Nolan Estes blithely described as the "educational innovation of the decade": a $15 million television network that will connect classes between elementary schools in largely segregated neighborhoods.
In an opinion entered last week, U.S. District Judge William M. Taylor Jr. not only bought that extraordinary idea, but also added a few wrinkles of his own. He envisions elementary students being ushered into a special television room daily for a one-hour session, transmitting and receiving lessons to and from a similar class in a school dominated by a different race. Included in this program would be weekly visits between the matching schools. "What better way to start to foster real integration," exclaimed Judge Taylor, "than for a student to be able to say 'Hey, I saw you on television last week.' "
Judge Taylor has a special treat for high school students. He decreed that any student who voluntarily transfers from a high school in which his race is the majority to one in which it is in the minority will be rewarded with a four-day school week.