Opinion
George P. Shultz
New York Times, Jan. 8, 2003
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2003/01/08/opinion/how-a-republican-desegregated-the-south-s-schools.html
In 1970, seven states -- Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina and South Carolina -- continued to enforce the dual school system. This was in clear defiance of the Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education, which declared dual school systems to be unconstitutional. It was also in defiance of a 1969 court decision ordering an end to further delay.
If it's possible to imagine, the subject of desegregation was becoming more inflamed by the day. In March 1970, President Richard M. Nixon decided to take action. He declared Brown to be ''right in both constitutional and human terms'' and expressed his intention to enforce the law. He also put in place a process to carry out the court's mandate. Vice President Spiro T. Agnew and I (then secretary of labor) were asked to lead a cabinet committee to manage the transition to desegregated schools.
The vice president said he wanted no part of this effort. So I became its de facto chairman, with help from Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then a counselor to the president, and Leonard Garment, one of the president's lawyers. With the president's support, we formed biracial committees in each of the seven states. The idea was to reach out to key leaders. Many were reluctant to serve, the whites fearing too close an association with desegregation, the blacks concerned that the committee might be a sham.
The first group to come to Washington was from Mississippi. We met in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, across the hall from the Oval Office. The discussion was civil, but deep divisions were evident. I let them argue for a while. Then, by prearrangement, I had John Mitchell, the attorney general, drop by. He was known in the South as a tough guy, and on the whole was regarded by whites as sympathetic to their cause. I asked Mitchell what he planned to do about the schools. ''I am attorney general, and I will enforce the law,'' he growled in his gruff, pipe-smoking way. He offered no judgments about whether this was good, bad or indifferent. ''I will enforce the law,'' he repeated. With that, he left.
I then addressed the group. ''This discussion has been intense and revealing, but you can see that it's not really relevant,'' I told them. ''The fact is, desegregation is going to happen, whether you like it or not. You have a great stake in seeing that this effort is managed in a reasonable way.'' Gradually, the discussion shifted to more operational issues.