He Loved that Sidney Poitier, too…by George Schultz

The Republican Party’s commitment to equality of opportunity has come under question in recent weeks, particularly its determination to deal effectively with racial segregation. That’s lamentable, for there is a laudable story to tell about the modern Republican Party and the efforts of a Republican president to ensure equal opportunity for all Americans.

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I remember the meeting in the Oval Office to discuss these proposed events. Vice President Agnew warned the president not to go. There you will be in that room, Mr. President, I recall him saying. Half the people there will be black; half will be white. Pictures will be taken. When the schools open, there will be blood running through the streets of the South, and if you go, this will be blood on your hands. This is not your issue. This is the issue of the liberals who have pushed for desegregation. Stay away.

The president looked at me. I told him what was obvious: I can’t predict what will happen. The vice president may very well be right about violence, but you’re the president of the whole country. We should do everything we can to see that the schools open and operate peacefully and well.

The president decided to go ahead.

The meeting with the Louisiana group began early on Aug. 14, 1970. The going was tougher than with any other delegation. It’s one thing to gather across from the Oval Office and it’s another thing to sit around a table in a hotel meeting room. The president was due to arrive about noon, but as the time drew near, I had not reached the level of agreement that I wanted. “The president has just landed,” came word from the Secret Service. “The president is 10 minutes out.” We took a break. I went to meet the president, the vice president’s views in the back of my mind. “Mr. President,” I told him, “I haven’t got this group there yet. I’m afraid you’re going to have to finish the job.”

The president came in. He listened. He talked. He emphasized the importance of having the schools open peacefully. If there were problems, children would suffer.

That afternoon we met with the co-chairmen from the seven states. Everyone was on board. At the end of the meeting, the president went before the television cameras. From the heart of the South, he spoke forcefully about his determination to enforce the law, and the importance of community involvement.

It is quite true that while Nixon enthusiastically embraced the Southern Strategy, he also personally oversaw a smooth transition to desegregated schools in several states in the south in 1970. But before we get all misty about his generous committment to civil rights, it’s probably a good idea to listen in on a couple of Dick’s taped conversations just sitting around the Oval shooting the breeze with Ehrlichman and Haldeman (and Rummy) around the same time:

We’re going to (place) more of these little Negro bastards on the welfare rolls at $2,400 a family . . . let people like Pat Moynihan and Leonard Garment and others believe in all that crap. But I don’t believe in it. Total emphasis of everybody must be that this is much better than we had last year. . . . work, work, throw ’em off the rolls. That’s the key.”

(Uh, Mickey…..?)

“It hurts with the blacks. And it doesn’t help with the rednecks because the rednecks don’t think any Negroes are any good.”

“Yes,” Rumsfeld replied.

As for the notion that “black Americans aren’t as good as black Africans,” Nixon said, “most of them are basically just out of the trees. … Now, my point is, if we say that, they (opponents) say, ‘Well, by God.’ Well, ah, even the Southerners say, ‘Well, our ni**ers is (unintelligible).’Hell, that’s the way they talk!'” the president said on the tape.

“That’s right,” Rumsfeld said.

Nixon moved easily from Blacks to Mexicans in his conversations, because they just go together like a chitlins and tamales, I guess.

“I have the greatest affection for them (blacks) but I know they’re not going to make it for 500 years,” says Nixon. “They aren’t. You know it too. I asked Julie about the black studies program at Smith (College, which she attended).”

“The Mexicans are a different cup of tea,” says Nixon. “They have a heritage. At the present time they steal, they’re dishonest. They do have some concept of family life, they don’t live like a bunch of dogs, which the Negroes do live like.”

As so often happens in these conversations, the topic then smoothly moves on to gays, which really seems to work these guys up. This conversation took place over 30 years ago, but I imagine you can hear much of the same stuff today at pot luck suppers in the Southern Heritage Community :

You know what happened to the Greeks! Homosexuality destroyed them. Sure, Aristotle was a homo. We all know that so was Socrates.”

“But he never had the influence television had,” Ehrlichman says, apparently referring to Socrates.

“You know what happened to the Romans?” says Professor Nixon. “The last six Roman emperors were fags. Neither in a public way. You know what happened to the popes? They (had sex with) the nuns, that’s been goin’ on for years, centuries. But the Catholic Church went to hell, three or four centuries ago. It was homosexual, and it had to be cleaned out. That’s what’s happened to Britain, it happened earlier to France.”

“Let’s look at the strong societies,” says Nixon. “The Russians. Goddamn, they root ’em out. They don’t let ’em around at all. I don’t know what they do with them. Look at this country. You think the Russians allow dope? Homosexuality, dope, immorality are the enemies of strong societies. That’s why the communists and left-wingers are clinging to one another. They’re trying to destroy us. I know Moynihan will disagree with this, (Atty. Gen. John) Mitchell will, and Garment will. But, goddamn, we have to stand up to this.”

“It’s fatal liberality,” declares Ehrlichman, ever the sycophant.

“Huh?” says Nixon.

“It’s fatal liberality,” says Ehrlichman. “And with its use on television, it has such leverage.”

You know, I’m just stymied as to why the Republican Party’s commitment to equality of opportunity keeps coming under question. It just makes no sense. Trent Lott has a black maid. John Ashcroft loves spirituals. James Inhofe has a strong committment to Luxembourg’s cultural heritage. Jeff Sessions was deeply offended by the KKK’s embrace of reefer madness. (There was Strom, of course. And Jesse. They’re gone now, just like Tricky, who bore the white man’s burden with such class.)

But, before we start building memorials to their contributions to the civil rights movement, it would probably pay to remember that they never did one thing for one Black person that they were not absolutely forced to do, either by the courts or public opinion. Dick Nixon did desegregate southern schools during his term, but his conversations make it pretty clear that it wasn’t because of his adherence to these so-called bedrock Republican values of equal opportunity and color blindness, now was it?