The Mixmasters

The President said that segregation of pupils must be eliminated root and branch, and that it must be done at once. School desegregation is a racial problem. It's raw racial prejudice, and there's no other name for it.

Robert Mardian, executive director of Richard Nixon's Cabinet Committee on Education, has earned the grudging nickname of "the Mixmaster" from Southerners for using just such tough language with local officials who still maintain separate school systems for blacks and whites. For an Administration widely thought to be wedded to a "Southern strategy," the new hardline tactics add up to a welcome drive to end de jure segregation in the South. Elliot Richardson, sworn in last week as Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, and Robert Finch, his predecessor, have vowed publicly that by the time Southern schools reopen in the fall, the great majority of school districts will be desegregated. That prediction now seems sound.

To be sure, the goal of the Administration is not complete integration. When Nixon made his March 24 desegregation statement, he drew a line between segregation sanctioned by official policy (de jure) and that resulting from segregated housing patterns (de facto). Nixon has long been opposed to busing purely for the purpose of integration. The firing of HEW Civil Rights Chief Leon Panetta and Education Commissioner James Allen, both strong advocates of integration, has made it clear that the Administration's objectives are limited. Only last week, in a Supreme Court case involving schools in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, N.C., the Justice Department supported a lower court decision that said only "reasonable" busing need be required--even if some all-black schools remain. Nixon pledged on March 24 to follow the letter of the law--and it now seems definite that he intends to pursue the letter closely.

Whores in Church. There is nothing particularly altruistic about the Administration's course. Pressure from the courts to end de jure segregation remains strong. What is more, Nixon's political strategists plan to leave George Wallace with an empty issue in 1972. In Wallace's successful campaign for renomination to the Alabama governorship this spring, he scored points with white voters by pleading: "Give us back our schools." But, argues a White House aide, if Wallace raises that cry in 1972, Southerners are going to look around and see that their segregated schools have disappeared irretrievably.

Last week a newly formed 16-member, biracial state advisory committee on public education for Mississippi visited Washington. The Mississippians, including six blacks, met with the Cabinet committee for two hours; one Administration participant found the group to be "like a bunch of whores in church, all nervous about the publicity they would get back home." They saw Nixon for half an hour. As with U.S.-Soviet relations, Nixon explained, consensus is probably impossible. Still, he said, the mutual goal is to keep the peace, so grounds for accommodation can and must be found. His startling analogy brought to mind the Kerner Commission's prediction that the U.S. will split into "two societies."

Mardian, along with Assistant Attorney General Jerris Leonard and HEW Civil Rights Chief J. Stanley Pottinger,

Panetta's successor, has been pressing hard on the Southerners. Dubbed "the traveling road show," the team has used an effective four-front strategy. First, they meet with local and federal officials to lay down the new line. Next, they hold off-the-record luncheons with local newsmen, then confer with state and local school officials. The last step is to establish statewide committees, like the 16-man Mississippi committee that met with Nixon, to work quietly and earnestly in supporting the desegregation program.

In their encounters with local officials, the Mardian group has not pulled its punches. To a group of objecting school officials in Columbia, S.C., Leonard explained: "Freedom of choice under all practical purposes of the law is dead. It is not accepted by the courts, and we cannot accept it. Each and every school district must be in compliance by next September. That means not starting, not thinking of a plan, not negotiating, but that the plan must be completely implemented before you open your school next fall. We want to lay that to rest right now. Is there anyone who believes that that isn't the law?" No reply. Leonard: "See how easy that was?"

Passing the Buck. Many Southern officials, while often finding the Mardian team brusque, nonetheless are delighted to have the opportunity to lay the blame on Washington if the local electorate should rise up against them. The Administration, on the other hand, finds the courts a handy weapon against which the Southerners cannot argue. Its most powerful bludgeon is the Supreme Court's "integrate now" ruling handed down in the Alexander v. Holmes case last year.

From late March through last week, the number of Southern districts with voluntary desegregation plans approved since the new Administration drive began had reached 93 out of a total of 175. Almost all of the districts are in the five states visited by the road show. Last week, the picture looked like this: Arkansas--13 holdout districts out of 388; Florida--twelve districts outstanding out of 67; Mississippi--about 28 districts outstanding out of 149; North Carolina--nine districts outstanding out of 155; South Carolina--20 districts outstanding out of 92.

According to Leonard, "the string has run out" for diehard segregationist school districts. He estimates that the Justice Department will file 25 to 40 injunction suits. One suit may also be filed embracing all of the Mississippi holdouts. That will be done, he insists, after one more road-show visit to Mississippi this week, which Mardian has wryly referred to as "Last Chance Saloon." If other recalcitrant Southern districts fail to go along voluntarily, Leonard promises, the team's July 1 deadline will still be substantially met --with the help of lawsuits filed by the middle of the month.

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