Civil Rights and Executive Commitment

...What, then, must the Democrats do to get America back on the road to equal opportunity9 We must develop a social action program that can be implemented if our candidate gains the Presidency...

...Fortunately, m the '50s several developments were conspiring to put Jim Crow behind us The modern civil rights movement, inspired by the courage of Dr Martin Luther King Jar , was helping Americans to accept the Negro not simply as a Negro but as a fellow human being His nonviolent vision captured all of us when, echo St Paul, he cried out to his followers "You may even give your body to be burned, and die the death of a martyr, and your spilled blood may be a symbol of honor for generations yet unborn, and thousands may praise you as one of history's supreme heroes, but even so, if you have no love, your blood is spilled in vain ". At the same time, America was increasingly realizing that it had a "white problem ' too Once this recognition took hold, pressure mounted on Congress to enact needed changes After 1956, a great part of the legislative leadership in the area of civil rights and social welfare came from a generally unnoticed source—the Democratic Study Group Formalized out of Minnesota Representative Eugene "McCarthy's Mavericks,' this ad hoc body developed a broad social and economic platform, much of which became the law of the land under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson And over in the Senate a strong corps of Republicans and Democrats was also coalescing around key issues, leading in 1957 and 1960 to the first of the modern civil rights bills Their limitations notwithstanding, these measures helped create the lawmaking momentum of the '60s With John Kennedy's leadership on civil rights, America could no longer turn back True, his Administration offered few legislative initiatives at first and sometimes was also compelled to straddle in order to ease its programs through Congress But when the crunch came and...

...Not until the time of Franklin Delano Roosevelt did the mass of Negroes begin to move out of the backwaters and slowly into the mainstream of national life Under Harry Truman, who told his Committee on Civil Rights that "I want our Bill of Rights implemented in fact," the Presidential commitment to equal opportunity matched that of the Declaration Except for military desegregation, unfortunately, Truman did not see his dreams carried out in his tenure Yet his stand was so firm that four deep South states defected from the Democratic camp in 1948...

...Drum the Eisenhower era straddling on civil rights became the Executive norm, despite the leadership exercised by the Supreme Court from the 1954 Brown decision onward The lesson we all learned was that if decisions of the courts are not actively supported by appropriate administrative agencies, the sores of racial injustice are inevitably rubbed raw...

...First, we must pledge to enforce the statutes already on the books As the U S Civil Rights Commission conclusively demonstrated in 1970, there has been a massive breakdown in Federal execution of existing legislation, a situation that is continuing to grow worse Similarly, we must promise that affirmative compliance with existing civil rights laws by state and local governments will be a routine condition for receiving all Federal financial assistance, including funds returned in any revenue-sharing plan...

...Third, although our urban problems remain the most serious obstacle to equal opportunity, the Congress has committed this nation to promoting a "sound balance between rural and urban America " To fulfill this mandate, we need to encourage rural capital development that would create new regionalized growth centers m the American economy These will ease the pressures...

...Raymond Aaron has argued that America's civil rights problem is "tragic because Negroes and whites despite their theoretical loyalty to Americanism and its values, have remained socially so alien they may perhaps be tempted to formalize their separation at the very moment they achieve the right and ability to become united " Rigid separation would certainly be a tragic outcome to our historical quest for civil rights and full opportunity No doubt there will always be significant cultural and social differences among us But that does not excuse us from the struggle to achieve the right to late, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all To accept anything less would be a violation of the ideals that gave birth to our country...

...Hubert H Humphrey, Demociatic senator from Minnesota, is a long-time contributor to The New Leader by "proving" that "legislation cannot make mores" nor "state ways change folkways " No one, we were informed m Congress, can legislate morality...

...Lyndon Johnson used to remind us that we have only one President at a tune and that he deserves at least our sympathy and respect for trying Richard Nixon, for all his failures, did try to achieve progress in employment, welfare reform and revenue sharing Unfortunately, these efforts seem to be headed nowhere In his dramatic August 1971 address to the nation on economic reforms, the harsh reality became clear The President's bungling of the economy for three years forced him to ask Congress "to amend my proposals to postpone the implementation of revenue sharing for three months and welfare reform for one year ". Several years ago Harry Golden observed that "noble Southerners have raised their voices aghast immorality and injustice but have remained mute about racial segregation because to condemn it made them traitors " But in today's South economic and social questions—whitch cannot be answered by rhetoric...

...Thinking Aloud CIVIL RIGHTS AND EXECUTIVE COMMITMENT BY HUBERT H HUMPHREY Is President Nixon trying to create a new climate for civil rights, a second post-Deconstructionist era m which the games of the past decades will be cast aside9 Judging from the political ebb and flow of the past three years, one would have to say Yes The Administration has unflinchingly straddled civil rights issues, even the most liberal Republicans have found their zeal chilled by Presidential memoranda warning that their heads will roll if they seek to enforce existing statutes "Watch what we do, not what we say" has been the official password, and in some instances the admonition has proven not without merit Yet on the whole, little has been said and less done...

...The two essential ingredients of the Nixon recipe for civil rights seem to be (1) code words such as "strict constructionist" and "forced integration" to slow down Federal efforts against racial discrimination, and (2) reliance on welfare reform and revenue sharing to improve the lives of the urban poor These have been mixed into a political stew called the "Southern strategy ". Some uses of the first ingredient are well known??e g, Attorney General John Mitchell's 1969 confrontation with the Supreme Court over desegregating Mississippi's schools Even legal novices realized this ploy would merely transfer responsibility for Federal civil rights leadership from the Executive Branch, where Congress had placed it m 1964, to the Court, which has few instruments to integrate urban schools, higher education, the nation's 25,000 nudism homes, and so forth The President subsequently produced his 8,000-word legal brief on school desegregation, promising no busing, and his June 1971 message on equal housing Whatever their intentions, these statements were interpreted as a pledge to keep blacks in their place Of course, neither statement reflected "strict constructionist" or "law and order," but rather a defiance of the affirmative compliance provisions of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1968 Act The public should not have been surprised when Nixon Supreme Court nominees...

...the nation had to know just where he stood, President Kennedy left no doubt Responding to the racial violence m Birmingham and elsewhere in the South, he said "Let it be clear, in our own hearts and minds, that it is not merely because of the cold war, and not merely because of the economic waste of discrimination, that we are committed to achieving true equality of opportunity The basic reason is because it is right" President Kennedy's death triggered the flood of civil rights and social legislation worked through Congress by President Johnson, ambivalence on equality became a historical and political anachronism While black, brown and red Americans still trail whites in most economic and social measures of success, and free social relations among the races remains a goal envisioned but unachieved, minority progress since 1960 has been truly revolutionary Legal barriers to integration have generally fallen and housing, jobs, income, and education have improved dramatically The country has good cause for hope—pprovided we recognize that America's problem, to cite Archibald MacLeish's formulation, is "not to discover our national purpose but to exercise it" A President out of tune with history, as Richard M Nixon has been, might attempt to return us to the social complacency of the past, and in limited ways he might succeed But history does not stand still, even for Presidents Our nation simply will not long support attempts to sidetrack the quest for civil rights and full opportunity...

...economic, environmental, social, and fiscal—genervated by the concentration of 70 per cent of our people on 2 per cent of the land...

...Should his new economic course pay off, Nixon may still check inflation and create more jobs, goals that eluded him during his first three years in office But even if he achieves these goals, he will surely have done little to improve the quality of life for the poor lack, Spanish-speaking, Indian, or white...

...are evidently larger than racial ones Moreover, as John S Nettles, Vice Chairman of the Alabama NAACP, told the Washington Post, the South is "dealing with a new rigger now—a black man who is no longer afraid ". President Nixon's Southern strategy might have succeeded in the South of 10 years ago, when only 1 5 million black citizens were registered to vote Now the number has reached 3 6 million, and the white community is turning its back on the past (In this new South, the Republican Governor of Virginia—onice the home of "massive resistance"?respectfully" disagrees with the President and urges Virginians not to resist court-ordered busing l) Indeed, the new South is increasingly facing the same problems as the rest of the country...

...Second, Democrats ought to promote the cause of equal opportunity by expanding Federal monetary and technical assistance to minority enterprises and to financing institutions, as well as to community self-help programs Federal projects like "Model Cities," now tottering after three years of the Nixon Administration, must be strengthened In addition, renewal and development plans for our metropolitan centers must be made to include lower- and moderate-income housing with good public facilities and services Since housing opportunities and public transportation in suburban locations are limited, jobs in these areas are effectively denied to underemployed and unemployed residents of the inner city Principal HUD officials have stressed that income discrimination in housing affects more whites than blacks, but one would never guess this to be true from the President's pronouncements on the matter Furthermore, we should create a National Domestic Development Bank (as proposed in legislation I recently introduced) to provide the funds to restore our decaying cities...

...Although the Declaration of Independence held it to be a self-evident truth that all men are created equal,Richard Nixon is not our first national leader to compromise that ideal for political considerations Some historians argue that Thomas Jefferson, for example, wanted the Declaration to censure George III for emasculating the "most sacred rights of life and liberty of a distant people, who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere " As Jefferson succinctly pointed out, however, this provision was not inserted because it might have offended the North, where "people had very few slaves themselves, yet had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others " Throughout the history of our quest for civil rights, progress has been blocked by the tacit agreement that only he who is without sin may cast a stone Immediately following the Civil War, radical Recon-structionism was imposed on the South, but in a decade it gave way to a general weariness about the rights of black Americans, and once again reality fell short of ideal President Grant finally complained that "the whole public are tired out with these annual autumnal outbreaks in the South, and the great majority are ready now to condemn any interference on the part of the Government' When Northern liberalism acceded to the Compromise of 1877, we began the long retreat during which, as C Vann Woodward observed, "at no time were the sections very far apart on race policy " Education, voting, public transportation, decent housing, employment??all became legally the exclusive preserve of whites William Graham Sumner and the Darwinian sociological tribe soon confirmed American prejudices...

...were marked by inadequate judicial qualifications or actions connoting bigotry Meanwhile, the President has allowed the second ingredient, his plans for revenue sharing and welfare reform, to be consigned to the limbo of neglect In his eloquent farewell to the Administration, Darnel P Moy-man forecast precisely this result, pointing to the persistent inability of the White House to develop a second-and third-order advocacy of its priorities Although Moynihan did not mean for his remarks to be so construed, they leave a distinct impression of the Executive's gross mismanagement of its own initiatives And when this mismanagement of programs was extended to a massive mismanagement of the economy, the cause of legal and social justice suffered a sizable setback...