Nixonland.

Chapter 7

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A neighborhood newspaper called it "the blackest day in the history of the Southwest Community," but also found the violence "understandable." The attackers, after all, had "earned their way into the community by hard work and expect others to do the same."

On Tuesday, Pat, Julie, and Tricia Nixon appeared in a photograph on the New York Times New York Times society page at the Paris unveiling of Pierre Cardin"s fall line. A news brief noted RN"s visit with the pope, part of every presidential aspirant"s ethnic stations of the cross; his next stop was Tel Aviv, and he had already visited Ireland. Then he jetted off for Asia, where he"d earn notices such as these: "Former Vice President Nixon met with President Mohammed Ayub Khan in Rawalpindi today. They are old friends. Field Marshal Ayub came to power in 1958 when Mr. Nixon was vice president. Mr. Nixon, on a world tour, will leave for Bangkok, Thailand, tomorrow." While, back in Chicago, Mayor Daley met with Bungalow Belt civic leaders, who looked forward to solidarity from one of their own. society page at the Paris unveiling of Pierre Cardin"s fall line. A news brief noted RN"s visit with the pope, part of every presidential aspirant"s ethnic stations of the cross; his next stop was Tel Aviv, and he had already visited Ireland. Then he jetted off for Asia, where he"d earn notices such as these: "Former Vice President Nixon met with President Mohammed Ayub Khan in Rawalpindi today. They are old friends. Field Marshal Ayub came to power in 1958 when Mr. Nixon was vice president. Mr. Nixon, on a world tour, will leave for Bangkok, Thailand, tomorrow." While, back in Chicago, Mayor Daley met with Bungalow Belt civic leaders, who looked forward to solidarity from one of their own.

But Daley was in a difficult spot. Arrest Martin Luther King, and Daley would become an international pariah. A committee of Chicago VIPs was shuttling back and forth from D.C. to lobby for the Democratic Party"s 1968 convention. Hosting it was Mayor Daley"s dream. Winning elections for the Democratic Party was the focus, the meaning, of Richard J. Daley"s entire life. Here before him was the heart of his machine. Black Chicago had, meanwhile, given him 90 percent of their vote in 1963-and his margin of victory. This was perfect agony: his const.i.tuencies were at war with each other. And so he did something extraordinary: he lectured the stunned white ethnics. Told them them not to demonstrate. And ordered the police to offer King"s marchers safe pa.s.sage. not to demonstrate. And ordered the police to offer King"s marchers safe pa.s.sage.

August 5. Six hundred open-housing activists, ten thousand counterdemonstrators. Some wore n.a.z.i helmets. Others waved Confederate battle flags, carried George Wallace banners, swastika placards that helpfully explained THE SYMBOL OF WHITE POWER. THE SYMBOL OF WHITE POWER.

Martin Luther King, Mahalia Jackson by his side, led his legions forth: "We are bound for the promised land!"

"Kill those n.i.g.g.e.rs!"

"We want Martin Luther c.o.o.n!"

Police trying to keep the two sides apart were screamed at: "n.i.g.g.e.r-loving cops!" "n.i.g.g.e.r-loving cops!" "G.o.d, I hate n.i.g.g.e.rs and n.i.g.g.e.r-lovers," a reporter overheard an old lady say. "G.o.d, I hate n.i.g.g.e.rs and n.i.g.g.e.r-lovers," a reporter overheard an old lady say.

Martin Luther King walked past.

"Kill him! Kill him!"

"Roses are red, violets are black, King would look good with a knife in his back."

Instead he got a baseball-size rock above his ear. He slumped to the ground-the Gandhian moment of truth. "I think everybody in that line wanted to kill everybody that was on the other side of the line," a marcher later recalled. King got up and kept on marching. We shall overcome. We shall overcome.

On the approach to Halvorsen Realty, someone did did throw a knife at King"s back. It caught some white kid in the neck instead. King had marched six weeks earlier through the Mississippi town where the civil rights workers Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner were murdered. He had called it the most savage place he had ever seen. Now he revised his opinion: "I think the people of Mississippi ought to come to Chicago to learn how to hate." throw a knife at King"s back. It caught some white kid in the neck instead. King had marched six weeks earlier through the Mississippi town where the civil rights workers Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner were murdered. He had called it the most savage place he had ever seen. Now he revised his opinion: "I think the people of Mississippi ought to come to Chicago to learn how to hate."

The march concluded, marchers dispersed. White neighborhood kids started battling police, clambering away with blood streaming down their cheeks, yelling what they heard the n.i.g.g.e.rs yell on the news: "Police brutality!" A yellow convertible tried to run a policeman down. Two hundred teenagers set out to storm Mayor Daley"s house. As police closed in, teenagers threw their incriminating a.r.s.enal of chains, cleavers, and clubs over the Thirty-fifth Street overpa.s.s of the Dan Ryan Expressway (an inattentive newspaper reader wrote to Senator Douglas and in the cognitive dissonance at the notion of lawless Caucasians called them "a gang of Negroes").

"There must be some way of resolving questions without marches," Daley whined plaintively into the TV cameras, haunted now by the most frightening chant of all: "Don"t vote for Democrats! Don"t vote for Democrats!"

Richard Nixon was in Saigon, denouncing Vietnam War critics at an airport press conference: they were "prolonging the war, encouraging the enemy, and preventing the very negotiations the critics say they want." He was simultaneously in U.S. News & World Report U.S. News & World Report with a guest editorial: "If Mob Rule Takes Hold in U.S.-A Warning from Richard Nixon." with a guest editorial: "If Mob Rule Takes Hold in U.S.-A Warning from Richard Nixon."

"Who is responsible for the breakdown of law and order in this country?" it asked. (The rhetorical question: a favorite Nixonian device. It made him look open-minded.) He framed the answer as a new version of his oldest political appeal. Blame the actual individuals who burned down buildings, certainly. But "the more important collaborators and auxiliaries" were otherwise. "It is my belief that the seeds of civil anarchy would never have taken root in this nation had they not been nurtured by scores of respected Americans: public officials, educators, clergymen, and civil rights leaders as well." He named Hubert Humphrey, who"d declared he could "lead a mighty good revolt"; the "junior senator from New York," who declared "there is no point in telling Negroes to obey the law"; and generically, "the professor" who, "objecting to de facto segregation," ends up turning youth into insurrectionists: to him "it may be crystal clear where civil disobedience may begin and where it must end. But the boundaries have become fluid to his students." Then, to prove "the professor" had nothing on him, he quoted Chaucer: "If gold rust, what shall iron do?" This was the argument he"d been making since Whittier: the Franklins were putting one over on the plain people.

Back in Washington, the long, hot summer played havoc with the Democratic coalition. Charlie "Mac" Mathias, a liberal Republican congressman from Maryland, had spent the summer pushing a compromise amendment to the civil rights bill exempting property covering four or fewer families-thus excluding the nation"s suburbs and the bungalow belts. Enraged civil rights activists-at least the ones who weren"t too militant to oppose legislative solutions at all-asked how something could be a const.i.tutional right, just not for the 62 percent of Americans thus excluded. The president came out against the compromise for that very reason. Dan Rostenkowski, one of the Bungalow Belt"s congressmen, begged the White House to backtrack. His Bungalow Belt colleague Roman Pucinski told the press the president should order civil rights activists to shut down marches altogether. These were men, like most Northern Democrats, who answered to the label "liberal"-Great Society men. The fight over the 1966 civil rights bill was calling all that into question. The Great Society was threatening their jobs.

Once it had been simple. Civil rights supporters knew who their enemies were: special interests such as the real estate a.s.sociations (who lobbied against the Mathias compromise for making something evil "palatable to the American people"). The lunatic far right (the executive director of the Liberty Lobby testified that King"s movement employed "ma.s.s brainwashing" just like "in n.a.z.i Germany, Fascist Italy, Communist Russia, and Communist China"). The old-line racist Dixie gargoyles (they kept on rehearsing for a revival of Birth of a Nation Birth of a Nation: Senator George Smathers wondering why "when a colored boy rapes a white girl, he gets off easier"; Representative William C. Cramer raising the specter of the "Social Security widow in my district" forced to rent to a black man-and you could almost picture the l.u.s.ty young buck he had in mind). This This opposition was predictable. The curveball was the opposition was predictable. The curveball was the new new opposition: the Pucinskis and the Rostenkowskis; the Jerry Fords, moderate Republicans who used to be the backbone of every civil rights vote. Now, the Dixie gargoyles were gloating, an ancient piece of Southern political folk wisdom was receiving its vindication: that once civil rights bills started affecting North as much as South, it wouldn"t just be Southerners filibustering civil rights bills. opposition: the Pucinskis and the Rostenkowskis; the Jerry Fords, moderate Republicans who used to be the backbone of every civil rights vote. Now, the Dixie gargoyles were gloating, an ancient piece of Southern political folk wisdom was receiving its vindication: that once civil rights bills started affecting North as much as South, it wouldn"t just be Southerners filibustering civil rights bills.

The Wall Street Journal Wall Street Journal articulated an argument echoing through Congress: "It is strange, although to an extent understandable, that the more civil rights legislation is piled onto the statute books, the more Federal money poured into attempts at Negro betterment, the more help freely proferred by businesses and individuals-the more the anger rises.... Every legislative enactment seemed to incite more mob activity, more riots, demonstrations, and bloodshed." Sam Ervin reported that the Senate Judiciary Committee had received over 8,000 letters on t.i.tle IV. Only 125 favored enactment. articulated an argument echoing through Congress: "It is strange, although to an extent understandable, that the more civil rights legislation is piled onto the statute books, the more Federal money poured into attempts at Negro betterment, the more help freely proferred by businesses and individuals-the more the anger rises.... Every legislative enactment seemed to incite more mob activity, more riots, demonstrations, and bloodshed." Sam Ervin reported that the Senate Judiciary Committee had received over 8,000 letters on t.i.tle IV. Only 125 favored enactment.

On July 25, when the bill was called up for ten hours of debate, the House floor had become a raging cauldron of incommensurate arguments over whether civil rights bills prevented riots or caused them. A conservative from Mississippi entered every news item about violent crime from that day"s Washington Post Washington Post into the into the Congressional Record. Congressional Record. A liberal from California pleaded that the "thousands of young Negroes who are militant and on the march" that Congress should be listening to were the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines fighting in Vietnam, who needed open housing to enjoy the fruits of the American dream upon their return. Republican Jim Martin of Alabama-running against Lurleen Wallace for governor-said, "The FBI has positive evidence that professional Communist agitators have helped to stir up recent Negro riots" via "secret messages by code transmitted from radio stations." Cleveland Democrat Wayne Hays blamed civil rights marchers: "Are they Americans? Are they traitors? What kind of people are they?" Six of the freshman Democrats who"d replaced Republicans on Lyndon Johnson"s coattails voted to strike the open-housing section altogether. A liberal from California pleaded that the "thousands of young Negroes who are militant and on the march" that Congress should be listening to were the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines fighting in Vietnam, who needed open housing to enjoy the fruits of the American dream upon their return. Republican Jim Martin of Alabama-running against Lurleen Wallace for governor-said, "The FBI has positive evidence that professional Communist agitators have helped to stir up recent Negro riots" via "secret messages by code transmitted from radio stations." Cleveland Democrat Wayne Hays blamed civil rights marchers: "Are they Americans? Are they traitors? What kind of people are they?" Six of the freshman Democrats who"d replaced Republicans on Lyndon Johnson"s coattails voted to strike the open-housing section altogether.

When the Mathias Amendment was put to a full House vote, an oddball coalition saw to its pa.s.sage by one vote: liberals trying to save a half-loaf version of open housing so that the final bill might pa.s.s; conservatives trying to save a half-loaf version of open housing so the final bill might fail. fail. Some congressmen were just confused about what they were voting on at all. The bill was sent to the Senate by a vote of 259157 on August 9. That same day in Lansing, Michigan, five cops were injured by firebombs and rocks; in Detroit, whites started stoning cars filled with blacks; in Milwaukee, a bomb tore open the office of the NAACP. In Cleveland the grand jury turned in its verdict that the riots were the responsibility of Communists. In Brooklyn two white men were shot after a brawl over racial slurs; in Grenada, Mississippi, "while," the Some congressmen were just confused about what they were voting on at all. The bill was sent to the Senate by a vote of 259157 on August 9. That same day in Lansing, Michigan, five cops were injured by firebombs and rocks; in Detroit, whites started stoning cars filled with blacks; in Milwaukee, a bomb tore open the office of the NAACP. In Cleveland the grand jury turned in its verdict that the riots were the responsibility of Communists. In Brooklyn two white men were shot after a brawl over racial slurs; in Grenada, Mississippi, "while," the New York Times New York Times reported, "state and local law-enforcement officials stood by, laughing and chuckling," a white mob ran off six hundred desegregation marchers. ("You"re going to see a show tonight," the sheriff had promised newsmen.) In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, that week, Secretary of State Dean Rusk"s twenty-five-year-old son, a leader of the National Urban League"s militant faction, stepped up to the podium at the group"s convention and said the civil rights movement suffered, if anything, from "too much reasonableness." He finished, to a standing ovation, "Watts came at noon. What will be our midnight?" reported, "state and local law-enforcement officials stood by, laughing and chuckling," a white mob ran off six hundred desegregation marchers. ("You"re going to see a show tonight," the sheriff had promised newsmen.) In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, that week, Secretary of State Dean Rusk"s twenty-five-year-old son, a leader of the National Urban League"s militant faction, stepped up to the podium at the group"s convention and said the civil rights movement suffered, if anything, from "too much reasonableness." He finished, to a standing ovation, "Watts came at noon. What will be our midnight?"

And in the Senate, Everett Dirksen, Paul Douglas"s conservative Republican senior colleague, whose acquiescence had been instrumental to the pa.s.sage of the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act ("Stronger than all armies is an idea whose time has come," he had said then), now made the same argument Goldwater had made in 1964: "I have no doubts whatsoever as to its unconst.i.tutionality."

Even Paul Douglas started to waver. He claimed residential segregation was merely the result of a benign "consciousness of kind," birds of a feather flocking together. The former social scientist was willfully ignoring, for instance, his own city"s Dan Ryan Expressway, fourteen impregnable lanes built to separate Mayor Daley"s neighborhood of Bridgeport and the black West Side. The previous year, Martin Luther King had called Douglas "the greatest of all senators." Now he was aping Daley. Without Daley"s support, after all, he might just lose his job, now that he was getting letters like these: "It is my firm belief, and of all my neighbors, that King should be taken into custody.... Today, the insufferable arrogance of this character places him on a pedestal as a dark-skinned Hitler."

"Is the ultimate aim the same as the Soviet Union when all property was collectivized?"

"We are writing you and requesting legislation for a repeal of the Civil Rights Act of 1964."

"If our present leaders are confused, perhaps a completely new group would be able to handle the situation better."

"IT IS TIME TO CHANGE THE LAW TO PROTECT ALL THE PEOPLE."

In Chicago, movement Turks like Jesse Jackson were insisting it was time to move on Cicero-the nation"s largest munic.i.p.ality without a single black resident. The last time a black man tried to live there, in 1951, the ensuing white riot was so big it made news around the world. This very summer a teenager who crossed over the border looking for work was beaten to death. "We expect violence," Jackson said, "but it wouldn"t be any more violent than the demonstrations last week." Another King deputy, James Bevel, said, "We will demonstrate in the communities until every white person out there joins the Republican Party."

At that, Daley gave in: he would negotiate with King.

An August 17 meeting with Daley and civic leaders ended with a pledge to hash things out in an all-day "summit" at the Palmer House Hotel. The next day, Daley played an ace stored up his sleeve. A machine judge issued a clearly illegal injunction against future marches. Daley presented his doughy mug on all three TV networks and offered a brilliant rationale: he claimed a 25 percent increase in crime in August so far, especially "those areas where there are the most families," because so many police were being diverted to protect marchers. (A letter to Senator Douglas the next day: "We believe sir, that unless you take action, blood will be shed on every street corner of our great city.") King played an ace of his own: if the Palmer House meeting didn"t yield a satisfactory agreement, they would march on Cicero. The Cook County sheriff called that "awfully close to a suicidal act" and readied the governor to call the National Guard.

The Klan received a permit to rally in Marquette Park. The mayor was asked if that meant they were welcome in Chicago. No more or less, he said, than Martin Luther King. He went to the Palmer House meeting, advised by his City Council speaker, Tom Keane, to "f.u.c.k "em," and negotiated an agreement Mike Royko called "an impressive doc.u.ment, chock full of n.o.ble vows and promises" that "wasn"t worth the paper it was printed on." King"s organizers signed off on it and left Chicago, not a single bungalow-block breached. f.u.c.k "em Daley had. He just did it in slow motion.

His white const.i.tuency was not sated. Their mayor had negotiated with a terrorist. "When greedy Mr. Hitler started taking over other countries, people at first thought "give him a little more, then he will be satisfied,"" one wrote Senator Douglas. "Give greedy Mr. King a little more freedom then he will stop. Isn"t that what we are being told today?"

Stokely Carmichael"s barnstorming lectures made all the papers: "When you talk of Black Power, you talk of bringing this country to its knees...you talk of building a movement that will smash everything Western civilization has created"; "In Cleveland, they"re building stores with no windows. I don"t know what they think they"ll accomplish. It just means we have to move from Molotov c.o.c.ktails to dynamite." Senator Abraham Ribicoff opened hearings to "undertake a detailed, full, and in-depth appraisal of the crisis in America"s cities and the role of the Federal Government in meeting it." The proceedings trailed fumes of apocalypse. The attorney general said, "There are thirty or forty cities with the same problems" as Chicago. (The New York Times New York Times reported that under the headline "Katzenbach Warns Senate 30 or 40 Cities Face Riots.") The reported that under the headline "Katzenbach Warns Senate 30 or 40 Cities Face Riots.") The U.S. News U.S. News roundup ran under the headline "A Trillion Dollars to Save the Cities?" The liberal roundup ran under the headline "A Trillion Dollars to Save the Cities?" The liberal Sacramento Bee Sacramento Bee editorialized that if such sums were not spent, the "explosive ghettoes...are in danger of becoming the cities themselves." Joseph Alsop, perhaps the most influential columnist in the United States, wrote a series of columns making the same argument demographically: in 1961, twenty-six thousand white children attended Washington, D.C., elementary schools. Now so many whites had fled to the suburbs that the number was thirteen thousand. He predicted there would be, "one day, a President Verwoerd in the White House." editorialized that if such sums were not spent, the "explosive ghettoes...are in danger of becoming the cities themselves." Joseph Alsop, perhaps the most influential columnist in the United States, wrote a series of columns making the same argument demographically: in 1961, twenty-six thousand white children attended Washington, D.C., elementary schools. Now so many whites had fled to the suburbs that the number was thirteen thousand. He predicted there would be, "one day, a President Verwoerd in the White House."

Hendrik Verwoerd was the prime minister of South Africa, the architect of apartheid. A few days later, that particular premonition of apocalypse was capped off when Verwoerd was a.s.sa.s.sinated on the floor of parliament.

Perhaps our Verwoerd would be Wallace. He gave a speech to the Fraternal Order of Police explaining what the Johnson administration knew full well but would not admit: that the summer"s riots had been planned at "a conference of world guerrilla warfare chieftains in Havana, Cuba," that "bearded beatnik bureaucrats" were "contributing leadership, and in some instances, public funds to help finance the discord," and that if the "police of this country could run it for about two years-then it would be safe to walk in the parks!" The men in blue gave him more than a standing ovation. They stood on their chairs. it would be safe to walk in the parks!" The men in blue gave him more than a standing ovation. They stood on their chairs.

A third wave of disturbances broke out in late August: Milwaukee; Brooklyn; Benton Harbor, Michigan; Dayton, Ohio (the National Guard stayed in town to make sure things were safe enough for the president to make a scheduled Labor Day speech). After one broke out in Waukegan, Illinois, a Republican official b.u.t.tonholed Charles Percy: "Chuck, do you have have to talk so much about open housing?" Though the remarkable fact now was that it didn"t matter if he talked about it or not. He was beginning to benefit from the issue by the simple fact of being a Republican. The old calculus of what kind of voters were bedrock Democrats and which were susceptible to Republican appeals was slipping away week by week. to talk so much about open housing?" Though the remarkable fact now was that it didn"t matter if he talked about it or not. He was beginning to benefit from the issue by the simple fact of being a Republican. The old calculus of what kind of voters were bedrock Democrats and which were susceptible to Republican appeals was slipping away week by week.

That August was a watershed in American history. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, the "party of Lincoln" was identified by the public as the party more favorable to the aspirations of Negroes. The Democrats" situation was complicated: they simultaneously began winning the allegiance of black voters by dint of the New Deal and relied on Southern segregationists for their majorities. But by the early 1960s, with Goldwater conservatives in the ascendancy among Republicans, and Northern liberals in the ascendancy within the Democratic coalition, a crossover point had been pa.s.sed. Decades later, two political scientists crunched the opinion poll numbers and identified 1958 as the key date at which both parties were judged equally Negro-friendly. After that, the two parties diverged. The trend had been plotted through contingent accidents of history: John F. Kennedy"s decision to phone Coretta Scott King with words of support as her husband sat in jail in Atlanta on the eve of the 1960 election, sending troops to integrate the University of Mississippi in 1962, introducing a sweeping civil rights bill in response to the violence in Birmingham in 1963; and Nixon sending Barry Goldwater to campaign for him in the South in 1960, then the selection of Barry Goldwater as the next Republican nominee. The evolution was uneven: plenty of Southern Democrats were still segregationists, plenty of Republicans championed civil rights-such as John Lindsay, who as a congressman pushed for a civil rights law to the left of JFK"s, then was hailed as the savior of the post-Goldwater GOP when he won New York"s mayoralty in 1965. The first black since Reconstruction likely to be senator, Attorney General Ed Brooke of Ma.s.sachusetts, was a Republican. George Romney won and rewon the governorship of Michigan by championing civil rights. One official party brochure pointed in 1965 to LBJ"s "failure to enforce civil rights legislation" as a reason to vote Republican.

The long, hot summer of 1966 was when the national Republican Party changed its mind.

Manny Celler had been shocked by the vituperative response of Minority Leader Ford at his July motion to rush the civil rights bill to the floor. Evans and Novak reported that Ford had been coming "under heavy, concealed pressure from liberals and moderates...not to put the Party"s stamp on an amendment to strip the housing section from the administration"s civil rights bill." But in a statement on August 2, that was exactly what Ford"s House Republican Policy Committee did. Ford began the press conference with a flourish toward the GOP"s historical leadership in "the fight for justice and progress and human rights." He then declared, however, "Respect for law and order is basic to the achievement of common goals within our nation," and blamed the open-housing struggle for law and order"s decline. "Since its inception, it has created confusion and bitterness. It has divided the country and fostered discord and animosity when calmness and a unified approach to civil rights problems are desperately needed."

And so on the first anniversary of the riots in Watts, twenty-one months after the 1964 Johnson landslide, Goldwaterism became official House Republican policy on civil rights.

The Republicans were only following the lead of the public. Millions of voters were newly equating Republicanism with preserving their homes, and voting Democratic with surrendering them. In California, people who"d voted Democrat their entire adult lives were pledging fealty to Ronald Reagan. In Chicago, John Hoellen, a George Wallacestyle backlasher and one of the city"s few Republican aldermen, was mounting a surprisingly strong challenge against Roman Pucinski-an unheard-of threat to the invincible Daley machine. Pucinski plunged forth to save himself by urging court-ordered restraints on civil rights marches. Hoellen did him one better by proposing that Martin Luther King be taken into immediate custody. In the Sat.u.r.day Evening Post Sat.u.r.day Evening Post Stewart Alsop recorded his pleasure that two "men of genuine ability" were contending for Illinois"s Senate seat, and that both "courageously maintained stands for open housing"-but had to admit that "Percy benefits from the backlash nearly as much as the backlasher Hoellen.... In a system accustomed to straight-ticket voting, many an angry white voter will simply pull the Republican lever." Stewart Alsop recorded his pleasure that two "men of genuine ability" were contending for Illinois"s Senate seat, and that both "courageously maintained stands for open housing"-but had to admit that "Percy benefits from the backlash nearly as much as the backlasher Hoellen.... In a system accustomed to straight-ticket voting, many an angry white voter will simply pull the Republican lever."

As for Senator Douglas, he got more and more letters like this: "While you sit on your b.u.t.t in Washington Martin Luther King is violating everything I bought and paid for. That jacka.s.s Percy is beginning to look good to me."

And at that jacka.s.s Percy"s headquarters, certain ideological adjustments were being considered.

Curiously, Richard Nixon referenced the issue only once that summer and fall, in U.S. News & World Report. U.S. News & World Report. In his speeches, he said nary a word on law and order, nor on open housing. In his speeches, he said nary a word on law and order, nor on open housing.

In his turn at the Los Angeles Sports Arena back in June, he predicted "the greatest political comeback by either party in the twentieth century"-but said nothing about the spreading panic over the supposedly imminent Independence Day riot. The night Martin Luther King was at the Sherman House in Chicago predicting "darker nights of social disruption," Nixon, speaking at the Hilton Hotel on South Michigan Avenue in the same city, promised a Republican Congress would bring "new leadership to fight Vietnam and high prices"-but nothing on how a Republican Congress would fight Carmichael and King. Nixon knew the issue was the royal road to Republican victory in November-in California, he told his protege Robert Finch, running on Reagan"s ticket for lieutenant governor against the inc.u.mbent lieutenant governor, Glenn Anderson, "I want everyone in California to believe that Glenn Anderson was responsible for Watts." Nixon just left it to others to push it.

Race had always been the best-oiled hinge in the strange contraption that was Nixon"s ideology, swinging from one position to the next year to year, month to month-even, at the 1960 convention, from hour to hour. In 1963 he supported JFK"s civil rights bill. Then, when the bill was debated in the House, he savaged efforts "to enforce integration in an artificial and unworkable manner." He had no problem catering to fear of Negroes if political expediency demanded it. (It was indeed what he felt in his heart. Went through his whole thesis re: blacks and their genetic inferiority, Went through his whole thesis re: blacks and their genetic inferiority, Bob Haldeman wrote in his diary one day of a May 1969 meeting with the boss.) Why he didn"t wish to be a.s.sociated with the hottest Republican issue, as he jockeyed for the Republican gra.s.s roots, was a bit of a mystery. The front-runner for the nomination, George Romney, was appealing publicly for t.i.tle IV to be kept in the civil rights bill, riots be d.a.m.ned. Behind closed doors, Richard Nixon was telling other Republicans to hit the riot issue as hard as they could. And he was an ex officio member of the House Policy Committee, which had come out against the open-housing t.i.tle of the civil rights bill as a menace to law and order. Bob Haldeman wrote in his diary one day of a May 1969 meeting with the boss.) Why he didn"t wish to be a.s.sociated with the hottest Republican issue, as he jockeyed for the Republican gra.s.s roots, was a bit of a mystery. The front-runner for the nomination, George Romney, was appealing publicly for t.i.tle IV to be kept in the civil rights bill, riots be d.a.m.ned. Behind closed doors, Richard Nixon was telling other Republicans to hit the riot issue as hard as they could. And he was an ex officio member of the House Policy Committee, which had come out against the open-housing t.i.tle of the civil rights bill as a menace to law and order.

Every move he made was calculated for 1968. But what was the calculation behind this this?

CHAPTER SIX.

School Was in Session...

RICHARD N NIXON RETURNED FROM HIS ROUND-THE-WORLD TOUR ON August 20. In New York he convened a boot camp for his advance team (predict attendance for your event, then rent a too-small hall, earning the blessed press notice "standing room only"; tell reporters you were only a volunteer so Nixon could tell them he wasn"t running for president because "I have no staff"). Then he made a tour of the District of Columbia, his intentions now beyond doubt: this was, Evans and Novak reported, the opening bell of "the second presidential campaign of Richard M. Nixon." August 20. In New York he convened a boot camp for his advance team (predict attendance for your event, then rent a too-small hall, earning the blessed press notice "standing room only"; tell reporters you were only a volunteer so Nixon could tell them he wasn"t running for president because "I have no staff"). Then he made a tour of the District of Columbia, his intentions now beyond doubt: this was, Evans and Novak reported, the opening bell of "the second presidential campaign of Richard M. Nixon."

Though actually it was his third. Sometimes it was hard to keep count.

Over the previous weeks, in press conferences at airports across Asia, designating himself "a chief Republican spokesman on foreign policy issues," Nixon laid out his hardest Vietnam line yet: "We are fighting in Vietnam to prevent World War III and to keep the Pacific from becoming a Red Sea." He said that "for the first time now I am leaving Vietnam with confidence that it is not possible for us to lose this war from a military standpoint," that calls for a negotiated settlement would only "encourage the Communist leaders to prolong their resistance," that Fulbright types who claimed to be for peace were only "prolonging the war.... We have had the debate on the war. All sides have had the opportunity to present their views. The decision has been made. Further debate on the basic issue is not going to change anything-all it can do is to give our friends, our enemies, and our own people a continuing picture of American disunity." He said the argument must be limited to "tactics."

Then, immediately reversing his pledge, he argued strategy.

According to "some American leaders" (not d.i.c.k Nixon, mind you), the war might last twenty years if the president"s course didn"t change. So it was time to pour in half a million troops at least. "I don"t believe the Communist Chinese have the military capacity to take on the United States," he p.r.o.nounced in Tokyo. "Now that we have hit the oil supplies, we should not be inhibited by the fiction that targets in the Hanoi area should not be hit," he said in Saigon. Do this, he said, and our side could reach its "conclusion militarily" in "two or maybe three years." He added slyly, "Possibly the elections can achieve this."

That was in practically the same breath in which he said that politics had to be kept out of foreign policy.

The New York Times New York Times welcomed Nixon home with a mordant Sunday lead editorial: "The issue he raises is precisely the one he insists should no longer be a subject for debate: the American objective in the conflict." He said it should be "victory." But the welcomed Nixon home with a mordant Sunday lead editorial: "The issue he raises is precisely the one he insists should no longer be a subject for debate: the American objective in the conflict." He said it should be "victory." But the Times Times noted Pentagon sources who said that "victory" would take five to eight years and 750,000 troops-and risked a gate-crashing by Vietnam"s nuclear-armed neighbors. "President Johnson repeatedly has proclaimed more limited aims: to prevent a Communist victory and achieve a negotiated settlement.... A commitment to endless escalation in pursuit of military victory on the Asian mainland would be a commitment to disaster." Nixon"s "prescription for Vietnam has less to do with the war than with the congressional battles in the United States this year and the Presidential contest of 1968," the editorial writers chided, congratulating themselves on seeing through Nixon"s play. noted Pentagon sources who said that "victory" would take five to eight years and 750,000 troops-and risked a gate-crashing by Vietnam"s nuclear-armed neighbors. "President Johnson repeatedly has proclaimed more limited aims: to prevent a Communist victory and achieve a negotiated settlement.... A commitment to endless escalation in pursuit of military victory on the Asian mainland would be a commitment to disaster." Nixon"s "prescription for Vietnam has less to do with the war than with the congressional battles in the United States this year and the Presidential contest of 1968," the editorial writers chided, congratulating themselves on seeing through Nixon"s play.

They needed only to wait a few days before a different play emerged. Chuck Percy"s idea to settle Vietnam through a conference of Asian nations was now all the rage in Republican circles. An unnamed senator, according to David Broder, approached Nixon to sign him on to the idea and was doubtful of his chances, considering Nixon had just said negotiations would only prolong the war. The senator needn"t have feared. Nixon "instantly grasped the importance of the proposal to Percy"s campaign for Senate," the senator told Broder. Nixon said he would support it and, the senator related, "left my office and walked into a press conference and, on the spot, constructed a better argument for the All-Asia Conference than I had ever heard before"-claiming the conference idea was "running through Asia like wildfire." North Vietnam and China should partic.i.p.ate in such a conference, he added, arguing also that the bombing should be scaled back.

Which were things he had previously said would turn the Pacific into a Red Sea.

Then he took questions, so eager to please that when a reporter suggested that Republicans were tired of "old faces," Nixon quickly conceded the point. The only questions he wouldn"t answer, he said, concerned 1968-though he did volunteer that President Johnson might have to pick Robert F. Kennedy as a running mate if his poll numbers continued to slip.

Different moments carried with them different political requirements; this week"s was oleaginous demonstrations of Republican unity.

Watching Nixon go soft on Vietnam confirmed conservatives" suspicions that he wasn"t really really one of them. "Movement" conservatives, they had taken to calling themselves in the wake of the Goldwater crusade, after the example of the civil rights crusaders. They were a tribe, with their own rituals, kinship structures, origin myths, priests-foremost among them the men atop one of them. "Movement" conservatives, they had taken to calling themselves in the wake of the Goldwater crusade, after the example of the civil rights crusaders. They were a tribe, with their own rituals, kinship structures, origin myths, priests-foremost among them the men atop National Review, National Review, editor William F. Buckley and publisher William Rusher. editor William F. Buckley and publisher William Rusher.

The same day as his Capitol Hill press conference, Nixon had scheduled a sit-down with twenty of them at the Sh.o.r.eham Hotel. His rottweiler Pat Buchanan had got the ball rolling. Buchanan loved Nixon, whom he called the Old Man; Nixon loved to be called it, though he was only in his middle fifties-it was the name they"d called General Eisenhower in the White House. Buchanan was determined to make his fellow conservatives love Nixon, too. The vice president had written to William Rusher twice, and twice his letters hadn"t been answered. So Buchanan wined and dined a kid named Tom Charles Huston, a slack-voiced Indianan who was president of Young Americans for Freedom, and begged him to dine with the vice president. At dinner, the Old Man won Huston over. Huston played hardball, shutting down the Young Americans for Freedom leaders who wanted nothing to do with Nixon. Then he got himself quoted in Esquire Esquire saying "only Nixon is generally acceptable to all kinds of Republicans." For Nixon that was quite a coup: YAF had been formed at the 1960 convention out of an ad hoc attempt to try to sabotage his nomination in favor of Barry Goldwater"s. Then Huston brokered the meeting at the Sh.o.r.eham Hotel. saying "only Nixon is generally acceptable to all kinds of Republicans." For Nixon that was quite a coup: YAF had been formed at the 1960 convention out of an ad hoc attempt to try to sabotage his nomination in favor of Barry Goldwater"s. Then Huston brokered the meeting at the Sh.o.r.eham Hotel.

Nixon held a weak hand with conservatives, and not only because he"d just backed away from a military solution in Vietnam. He had spent 1964 ingratiating himself with them, telling Buckley, "If Barry showed that the Republicans can"t win with just the right wing, I showed in 1962 that we can"t win without them." But then, back in October of "65, after National Review National Review had put out an entire issue devoted to excommunicating the John Birch Society from the conservative movement, Nixon told a group of journalists "the Birchers could be handled, but that the real menace to the Republican Party came from the Buckleyites." had put out an entire issue devoted to excommunicating the John Birch Society from the conservative movement, Nixon told a group of journalists "the Birchers could be handled, but that the real menace to the Republican Party came from the Buckleyites."

But Buckleyites were riding high. Buckley had just gone on the air nationwide as the host of his own public affairs program, Firing Line. Firing Line. Americans for Const.i.tutional Action, which rated congressmen 0100 on their conservativism, had just released its scores for the first half of 1966: the previous year, forty-four congressmen had received zeros on their zero-to-hundred scale; now there were only four, and four more solons earning hundreds. Goldwater Republicans won primary upsets in Indiana, Idaho, and upstate New York. Americans for Const.i.tutional Action, which rated congressmen 0100 on their conservativism, had just released its scores for the first half of 1966: the previous year, forty-four congressmen had received zeros on their zero-to-hundred scale; now there were only four, and four more solons earning hundreds. Goldwater Republicans won primary upsets in Indiana, Idaho, and upstate New York.

Segregationist Democrats did fantastically well in the South"s late-summer gubernatorial primaries. A pattern repeated itself: moderates of sterling credentials became the favorite of swooning national pundits. In Arkansas it was former congressman and Johnson aide Brooks Hayes. In the border state of Maryland they were the fine liberal congressman Carlton Sickles and the outgoing governor"s protge, Attorney General Tom Finan. In Georgia they were three: Ellis Arnall, a former governor that political scientist V. O. Key called the most effective in the century; Ernest Vandiver, reputed to have saved the Georgia educational system after segregationists threatened to shut it down after Brown v. Board of Education; Brown v. Board of Education; and a dark horse, a handsome young navy man some called Kennedyesque, Jimmy Carter. The Democratic field in Georgia was so fine, some pundits thought no Republican would emerge to challenge the winner. and a dark horse, a handsome young navy man some called Kennedyesque, Jimmy Carter. The Democratic field in Georgia was so fine, some pundits thought no Republican would emerge to challenge the winner.

Then, the second part of the pattern: a far-right lunatic won the Democratic nomination. In Georgia it was high school dropout Lester Maddox, who took out regular ads for his restaurant in Atlanta papers that excoriated, for example, "the unG.o.dly Civil Rights legislation that the politicians and the Communists and the Communist-inspired agitators are trying to pa.s.s in congress that will enslave all Americans." In Arkansas it was state supreme court justice James "Justice Jim" Johnson, best known for his 1956 ballot initiative to nullify federal civil rights laws. In Maryland, it was George Mahoney, a malcontent who picked up racial demagoguery as a political convenience after his sixth electoral loss, took as his slogan "Your Home Is Your Castle-Protect It," and gave some of his speeches in minstrel dialect. Maddox"s path was smoothed by a riot during which Stokely Carmichael tooled through Atlanta telling milling throngs it was time to "tear this city up." Jim Johnson overcame a nasty rumor he was related to the president (old-timers might remember when it used to be an advantage for a governor to be able to boast of having the ear of the president). As for George Mahoney, he was so racist the state"s prominent Democrats endorsed the Republican, Spiro Agnew, the undistinguished chief executive of Baltimore County. All three were now Democratic gubernatorial nominees. In Baton Rouge a twelve-term inc.u.mbent congressman who supported the Great Society was labeled the leader of the "Black Power voting block" and swamped by John Rarick, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, who went on to become Congress"s spokesman for Americans who believed Communists were fluoridating the water supply. In the Senate, Everett Dirksen came just nine votes shy of pa.s.sing through his perennial bill to restore prayer in public schools (only three Republicans voted against it). The Supreme Court upheld a landmark obscenity prosecution; civil libertarians noticed a sudden spike in obscenity arrests and warned of "a witch hunt the likes of which we haven"t seen since the Salem trial."

"I would say the overall trend is, at the moment," allowed George Gallup in U.S. News & World Report, U.S. News & World Report, in an understatement, "towards more "conservative" sentiment." in an understatement, "towards more "conservative" sentiment."

Seventy-five percent of the delegates to the 1968 Republican National Convention, according to one survey, would be identifying themselves as conservatives. And now their self-proclaimed leaders sat before Richard Nixon in one room: the American Conservative Union, the group formed from the old Draft Goldwater organization; the Free Society a.s.sociation, the outfit established by Barry Goldwater"s "Arizona Mafia" from money left over from his presidential campaign; Americans for Const.i.tutional Action; Young Americans for Freedom; National Review National Review"s publisher, William Rusher. Many were already talking about drafting Ronald Reagan for president.

Nixon played hard to his strength. When the former vice president needed to sway an intellectual into loyalty to him, he gave a dazzling geopolitical lecture. People who heard it used the same phrase to describe it: tour de force tour de force-like listening to St. Augustine lecture on the Bible, or Darwin on the flora and fauna of the Galapagos. "Take any political situation in the d.a.m.n world, and he has war-gamed it this way and that, considering every which way it might go," one aide later recollected. "One senses that he knows the political geography of Planet Earth about as well as most Congressmen know their own districts," recalled another. It had been his method with Leonard Garment during his bizarre little slumber party the previous spring, hopping the fence to spend the night in Elmer Bobst"s pool cabana, keeping Garment up half the night with descriptions of the strategic situation obtaining in every last nook and cranny of a vast and shifting globe. Garment remembered Nixon baring his soul at the conclusion. He "said he felt his life had to be dedicated to great foreign policy purposes. This man, fiercely determined to stay in the political life for which he was in many ways so ill suited, told me he felt driven to do so not by the rivalries or ideological commitments or domestic politics but by his pacifist mother"s idealism and the profound importance of foreign affairs." It was the deepest thing Nixon possessed: this pa.s.sion to play the game of statecraft from the only seat that mattered-the captain"s. The one solid thing that lay behind all the poker player"s feints, blinds, bluffs. It was why he stayed in the game.

Forty years later, one of the YAFers remembered the tour de force at the Sh.o.r.eham as if it were yesterday: "No notes.... He goes around the world. Rattling off names, connections, "this is what we have to look for here...Russia and China...the Sino-Soviet split," and he starts mentioning names, names, and names below names, and names below names below names, and "here is what France is saying," and de Gaulle is saying this, and whoever was the British prime minister, and the prime minister of j.a.pan...I mean, he was and names below names, and names below names below names, and "here is what France is saying," and de Gaulle is saying this, and whoever was the British prime minister, and the prime minister of j.a.pan...I mean, he was rattling rattling off all these names." off all these names."

The performance was tailored to his audience. For Garment, the liberal Democrat, he pointed up his Quakerism and used the word pacifist. pacifist. For these conservatives, he skipped his inklings that a diplomatic rapprochement with Red China and some kind of working detente with the Soviets were possible and desirable. But part of it was not a performance at all. Woodrow Wilson was the only twentieth-century U.S. president he worshipped. A permanent world accord, a benevolent American hegemony at its heart: this was his redeeming glint of idealism. "Nixon said he would do anything, make any sacrifice, to be able to use his talents and experience in making foreign policy," Garment remembered. Even, on August 23, the sacrifice of lying that the notion of an all-Asia peace conference was spreading like wildfire, then crossing his fingers that no one in the For these conservatives, he skipped his inklings that a diplomatic rapprochement with Red China and some kind of working detente with the Soviets were possible and desirable. But part of it was not a performance at all. Woodrow Wilson was the only twentieth-century U.S. president he worshipped. A permanent world accord, a benevolent American hegemony at its heart: this was his redeeming glint of idealism. "Nixon said he would do anything, make any sacrifice, to be able to use his talents and experience in making foreign policy," Garment remembered. Even, on August 23, the sacrifice of lying that the notion of an all-Asia peace conference was spreading like wildfire, then crossing his fingers that no one in the National Review National Review crowd would hammer him with it later in the day. They didn"t. They were Nixon skeptics. He won them over. A partic.i.p.ant leaked to the crowd would hammer him with it later in the day. They didn"t. They were Nixon skeptics. He won them over. A partic.i.p.ant leaked to the Washington Post Washington Post that "lines of communication were opened that should be helpful later on." That, for now, was enough. that "lines of communication were opened that should be helpful later on." That, for now, was enough.

The Franklins were none too pleased; an umbrella of liberal GOP groups rushed out a self-pitying press release that said continued conservative influence in the Republican Party would bring costs "far greater than those incurred in 1964." The Times Times reported in their dispatch on the Sh.o.r.eham meeting that Nixon"s painting himself "as the Goldwater candidate of 1968" was "a tactical error of major importance." Let the sophisticates say so. Nixon knew Goldwater followers would knock on doors on Election Day until their hands bled, while "moderates" put out self-pitying press releases. The reported in their dispatch on the Sh.o.r.eham meeting that Nixon"s painting himself "as the Goldwater candidate of 1968" was "a tactical error of major importance." Let the sophisticates say so. Nixon knew Goldwater followers would knock on doors on Election Day until their hands bled, while "moderates" put out self-pitying press releases. The Times Times"s tactical sense would better have been served by casting its eye downtown, at the padlocked headquarters of its ancient and honorable rival the New York Herald Tribune. New York Herald Tribune. That liberal Republican citadel had just gone out of business-a symbolic casualty not merely of bad days for the newspaper business, but of the new conservative upsurge. That liberal Republican citadel had just gone out of business-a symbolic casualty not merely of bad days for the newspaper business, but of the new conservative upsurge.

School was in session. A new front opened in the sixties civil war. For twelve years, Southern schools had hardly done a thing to honor Brown v. Board of Education. Brown v. Board of Education. The federal government had hardly done anything to punish them. County after county maintained "dual" school districts: superior schools for whites, inferior ones for blacks. t.i.tle VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act stipulated that no segregated inst.i.tution of any sort could receive federal funding. In 1965, Lyndon Johnson signed the first federal school-funding law, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and a series of federal courts ruled that jurisdictions with dual school systems would have to file desegregation plans with the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) to get federal money (which would, in some school districts, make up a quarter of the budget). In April of 1965 HEW"s Office of Education announced the guidelines schools would have to meet to comply. The federal government had hardly done anything to punish them. County after county maintained "dual" school districts: superior schools for whites, inferior ones for blacks. t.i.tle VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act stipulated that no segregated inst.i.tution of any sort could receive federal funding. In 1965, Lyndon Johnson signed the first federal school-funding law, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and a series of federal courts ruled that jurisdictions with dual school systems would have to file desegregation plans with the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) to get federal money (which would, in some school districts, make up a quarter of the budget). In April of 1965 HEW"s Office of Education announced the guidelines schools would have to meet to comply.

They were piddling: they counted a district as making good-faith efforts toward integration even if district lines stayed exactly the same, but black families were allowed to file individual requests to enroll their children in white schools. These were known as "freedom of choice" plans. They weren"t worth the paper they were printed on. In real life when a black family tried to exercise freedom of choice, they were as likely as not to be visited by some insistent white man asking whether there hadn"t been some mistake, waving their home lease or car note in front of them to back up the threat. Not a single school district with a freedom of choice plan had subsequently integrated. By the end of 1965, only 6 percent of Southern pupils attended school with children of another race.

In March of 1966 HEW secretary John Gardner issued firmer guidelines; these demanded statistical proof of "significant progress."

And that led to the first shot on Fort Sumter.

There were twenty-two senators from states of the Old Confederacy. Eighteen of them signed a letter to the president calling the revised guidelines an "unfair and unrealistic abuse of bureaucratic power." George Wallace"s first political act after his wife"s nomination was to read a joint statement standing beside the Alabama congressional delegation that the guidelines were an "illegal" and "totalitarian" "blueprint devised by socialists." His school superintendent observed that Section 256 of the state const.i.tution-"Separate schools shall be provided for white and colored children, and no child of either race shall be permitted to attend a school of the other race"-forbade the state from compliance. Wallace went on statewide TV to announce that HEW had "the unqualified, one hundred percent support of the Communist Party, USA, as well as all its fronts, affiliates, and publications."

On July 18, 1966, the height of riot season, HEW took steps to defund three school districts in Mississippi. Senator Lister Hill threatened mutiny from President Johnson"s entire legislative program. LBJ"s East Texan aide Harry McPherson made a political warning: "Undoubtedly we are going to curse the day these cuts were made." Preserving the dual-schools citadel was a question of power. It was a question of Lost Cause pride. It was a question of racialized s.e.xual panic-"Please wake up!" read one of Lester Maddox"s newspaper ads in 1965, after a Negro admitted to the state university married a white cla.s.smate (this blot on the escutcheon of the University of Georgia, Charlayne Hunter-Gault, would end up being one of America"s most distinguished journalists). read one of Lester Maddox"s newspaper ads in 1965, after a Negro admitted to the state university married a white cla.s.smate (this blot on the escutcheon of the University of Georgia, Charlayne Hunter-Gault, would end up being one of America"s most distinguished journalists).

On August 9, the twelfth day of debate in the full House on the civil rights bill, a North Carolina congressman by the apt name of Basil Whitener introduced an amendment to moot t.i.tle VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act outright (Whitener had earlier whined of an amendment offering relief for Negroes injured or intimidated while voting, "Why cannot a person who is injured or intimidated be a white person for once?"). Georgia Republican Howard "Bo" Callaway played good cop, offering a more realistic subst.i.tute: "Nothing in this t.i.tle shall be construed to authorize action by any department or agency to require the a.s.signment of students to public schools in order to overcome racial imbalance."

Debate on the motion was called. There followed a shocking development. Back in the spring during House subcommittee hearings on the civil rights bill, northern Republicans with liberal records on race took turns offering their own states as models of the sort of biracial harmony that was possible in places where politicians didn"t demagogue on civil rights. One of them was Clark MacGregor of Minneapolis, proudly noting that racial backlash over school integration was "not a factor in my part of the country." But that had been May. This was August. Minneapolis had just suffered a riot. Word subsequently got out that in the riot"s wake the mayor had implored the city"s business establishment to create at least 145 new jobs for impoverished black teenagers. Evans and Novak reported what happened next: "The mayor had never experienced such a city-wide outbreak of hostility-phone calls, telegrams, and letters by the scores-as. .h.i.t him after he decided to respond to the riot with a promise of jobs and only limited police action."

And on the floor of the House, Clark MacGregor now went on a Dixie-style tear in support of his Georgia colleague: "If this amendment is defeated, we will be putting our stamp of approval on administrative action to destroy the neighborhood schools.... Mr. Chairman, it is not only the Southern states which have been affected."

The Speaker called the vote. The Callaway amendment pa.s.sed. A new national panic had burst to the surface: that the federal government would deliver the chaos of rioting urban slums to your own quiet, bucolic neighborhood via yellow bus, in the guise of combating "de facto" school segregation.

The "busing" panic was premature. Actual federal efforts to redraw school district boundaries, or to transport children across them, were years in the future. It made no difference. A September 9 column from Evans and Novak claimed, "In the highest reaches of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare...planners have secretly put together an education bill" that would "make a radical departure in government policy by supplying extra federal funds to school districts that achieve an integrated racial balance." What it referred to were pilot discussions to provide munic.i.p.alities with carrots to enhance educational opportunities for Negroes stuck in substandard districts-by, for example, setting up "education parks" or "education plazas" within cities where students could be sent for language, remedial reading, science, or art-enrichment cla.s.ses a couple of times a week. The same weeks the 1966 civil rights bill was filibustered to death, congressmen North and South behaved as if Washington, D.C., were about to cart schoolchildren off in tumbrels.

The commissioner of HEW"s Office of Education, Harold Howe, the man who, at Va.s.sar"s graduation in June, had observed that the civil rights battles of the future would be fought "in quiet communities, in pleasant neighborhoods," was a vocal critic of the conservatives" claims to be merely preserving the concept of the neighborhood school, impa.s.sioned about providing equal educational opportunities to kids who lived in the "world of wall-to-wall carpeting, pleasant back yards, and summer camp," and "their neighbors in the central city...who play in alleys and live six to a room." The House Rules Committee called him to testify and treated him like a visitation from h.e.l.l. "Mr. Speaker," South Carolina"s Mendel Rivers p.r.o.nounced, "this misfit should be fired. He is destroying the school system of America lock, stock, and barrel.... He talks like a Communist.... That is the reason why those of us who know call him a commissar of integration." And playing to type, the commissar, like some parody of a rich and out-of-touch professor, pulled on his pipe and responded in clouds of technicalities. Mendel Rivers"s side was winning the debate.

On Wednesday, September 21, Rules Committee Republicans engineered a surprise investigation into HEW"s desegregation guidelines; on Thursday the Senate Appropriations Committee slashed HEW"s enforcement budget; on Monday, the same committee argued the guidelines were illegal under the terms of the 1964 Civil Rights Act; on Tuesday there was a riot in the San Francisco ghetto (the New York Times: New York Times: "the police reported that a group of Negroes had broken into a gun store in Daly City, just to the south, and stolen all the guns"); and on Wednesday, September 28, Lester Maddox won a runoff to become the Georgia Democratic gubernatorial nominee. And on Thursday the Senate voted 5511 in favor, more or less, of what George Wallace had decreed back in April when he resegregated Alabama"s mental wards: that segregation would be allowed in hospitals if the doctor deemed race-mixing "detrimental to the health of a patient." Among the senators who agreed to the amendment were, the "the police reported that a group of Negroes had broken into a gun store in Daly City, just to the south, and stolen all the guns"); and on Wednesday, September 28, Lester Maddox won a runoff to become the Georgia Democratic gubernatorial nominee. And on Thursday the Senate voted 5511 in favor, more or less, of what George Wallace had decreed back in April when he resegregated Alabama"s mental wards: that segregation would be allowed in hospitals if the doctor deemed race-mixing "detrimental to the health of a patient." Among the senators who agreed to the amendment were, the Times Times reported, "a surprising number of Northern and Western liberal Democrats." Explained Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, HEW was going "too fast." Indeed in May, 32 percent of Americans thought that the federal government was "pushing integration too fast." Now the number was 58 percent, with only 10 percent saying it should move faster. Crowed Senator James Eastland of Mississippi, "The sentiment of the entire country

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