Pulling Us Apart

...If so, they soon caught on, as one Federal department after another began issuing regulations under Title VI and applying them to the multitude of public and private services in the South that depended on Federal funds...

...Reviewed by Charles E. Fager When Richard Nixon took office, it was obvious to most observers that he was heavily in hock to racists like Strom Thurmond...

...It was the first time," Panetta notes bitterly, that "the Federal Government and the segregationists had shared the defense table here since the civil rights battle had begun...

...It did not take place dramatically or all at once...

...It was only a few months later that Panetta was summarily dismissed, without even an hour's notice from the White House...

...rather, the regulations were eroded steadily as one Deep South school district after another called in its political chips to save itself from the impact of the law...

...The climax of this process came in August, 1969, when Finch, bowing to tremendous pressure, wrote an unprecedented letter to the Chief Judge of the Fifth U.S...

...His Southern supporters had played a key role in steering him successfully past George Wallace's spoiler campaign, and they clearly expected a substantial quid pro quo...

...Indeed, the Nixon "team" has compiled a record of retreats and reverses in race relations which should make even George Wallace envious: two Southern Supreme Court nominees rejected...

...The latter may well have been their top priority...

...It has even earned two stinging rebukes from the U.S...

...after all, it was the heart of the law...

...The stakes were clearly high: if a large chunk of Mississippi could get away with such a barefaced evasion of the law, the dam of compliance would break, and Panetta's enforcement effort would not be worth a dime...

...an open rebellion in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division...

...It didn't take long before they made known just what their price was: they wanted a piece of the Supreme Court, the guts of the Voting Rights Act—and Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act...

...Panetta goes into some autobiographical detail early in the book to sketch the evolution of his views on the law and civil rights...

...The White House had other ideas, however, and the bulk of Bring Us To-gether is taken up with detailing the exhausting battles that Panetta and OCR fought to stem the tide of retreat...

...He was hardly a radical, but he felt strongly that Title VI represented a step toward justice for Southern blacks, and that it had to be enforced vigorously...

...After reading this book and examining the Administration's subsequent record, it is not hard to anticipate the answer to Panetta's rhetorical question about its first year in office: "What had [Richard Nixon] done to pull the white society farther away from the black society...

...They wanted especially to reverse the school desegregation policies which were being applied by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare and which were threatening to bring down the dual school systems that were a pillar of the old way of life...

...Leon Panetta was a progressive California Republican of the Thomas Kuchel variety...

...Court of Appeals asking him to grant twenty-three Mississippi school districts an extension of time beyond the desegregation deadlines which had been laid down by his own staff in OCR...

...He took on the directorship of OCR with relish, intending to do just that...

...The Supreme Court, led by Nixon's own Chief Justice Warren Burger, understood this, and it lost no time in throwing out the Government's request and ordering immediate implementation of the original plans...

...And again and again, Panetta had to tack and maneuver desperately to preserve any integrity or credibility for his enforcement effort...

...A little later, when it became clear that no black person of any stature would touch the job, he was asked to take over as Director of the Office of Civil Rights...

...Bring Us Together recounts the story of the Administration's response to these pressures during its first year, as seen from HEW's Office for Civil Rights, which had the prime responsibility for enforcing the desegregation of schools...

...In the legal battle that ensued, the Administration found itself arguing for a delay of integration side by side with veteran segregationist lawyers and the Mississippi Attorney General...

...But the pattern Panetta elucidates here has remained a remarkably, and ominously, consistent one since then...

...He goes on for a full paragraph, but the first word is sufficient: "Plenty...

...When a few school districts and hospitals actually had their water cut off, Title VI became the prime target of every reactionary politician below the Mason-Dixon line...

...The span of time covered by Bring Us Together is brief...

...Some quiet jobhunting after the Nixon victory landed him a special assistantship to the other "California liberal" in the Administration, HEW Secretary Robert Finch...

...One wonders whether, during the debate over the bill, the opponents who focused their attention on the public accommodations sections of Title II really thought that was where its impact would be the most far-reaching...

...head-on court defeats in the school deadline case and, more recently, in the matter of busing...

...It was thus probably the best vantage point in the struggle, outside the Oval Office...

...he was, in fact, one of Kuchel's key assistants until the Senator's defeat by Max Rafferty in the 1968 primary...

...Civil Rights Commission within the past year, attacking its programs in almost every executive department as inadequate or worse and expressing a grave concern that, in its words, "the great effort made by public and private groups to obtain the civil rights laws now will be nullified through ineffective enforcement...