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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview L-0125, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Joseph Califano served as the Secretary of the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare from 1977 to 1979. In this interview, he discusses the main considerations and objectives of the criteria for desegregating higher education, particularly in North Carolina. Califano assesses former University of North Carolina Chancellor William Friday's general policy-making style, arguing that Friday's usual progressive thinking was restricted by the university's Board of Governors, the state's white political establishment, and the large number of black colleges throughout the state. Califano further explains how his anti-tobacco stance raised the ire of North Carolina officials. Because of these factors, Friday and North Carolina politicians resisted Califano's involvement in the state's higher education system. Contrary to North Carolinians' perceptions, Califano argues that the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) did not single out UNC for its reluctance to desegregate. He contends that the Nixon and Ford administrations failed to enforce civil rights laws, which led to an increased involvement of the federal courts. In turn, the federal courts applied significant pressure on him to pursue the desegregation of higher education. Califano admits that he sought to reframe how the OCR considered cases and remove the Office from the control of federal courts. Toward the end of the interview, Califano evaluates his tenure as a HEW official.
Joseph Califano served as the Secretary of the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare from 1977 to 1979. He recalls the reasons for the University of North Carolina's opposition to H.E.W.'s desegregation criteria.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
Yes, hi, Mr. Califano —
Okay, go ahead.
Yes. How are you?
Good.
First of all, let me just make sure that you understand that I'm tape recording.
That's fine.
That's okay. Good.
How do you tape yours? Is it hooked to your phone?
Well, actually I have a direct connection. It's like the jack hooks directly into the machine.
Yeah, that's great.
So it gives a clear connection. A clear recording. Let's see. I'd like
to start off just to ask you some—if you have any sort of general
reflections or observations about Bill Friday, based on
Well, that, I mean, you know, in terms of, you know, he chaired an education task force during the Johnson years. That's when I first came in contact with him. And he did a superb job. The issue, I think, the burning issue, at the time, as I recall, was whether federal aid to education should focus on poor children. Or was it that they should be general aid to education, which was the desire of the NEA and the Republicans. And he came down for aid—to keep focusing the aid on poor children. And I know he did a great job on that. You must have that date, '67 or something like that.
Yes.
Then we came down to the University of North Carolina to look for ideas, when I used to make a tour every spring to various campuses around the country to get ideas for Great Society programs for the next January. And the other contact I had with him was over the issue of desegregation. And there we disagreed.
On the latter, I guess you had extensive, fairly long contacts over —
Pardon me?
Your contacts with him on the latter, that is the on the case of desegregation, were over several years. Two years or so.
Well, you have to put that—my contacts with North Carolina were over a few years. I had almost no direct contact with Bill Friday. I think I did send people down there. I think I sent David Tatel, who ran the Office for Civil Rights. And I sent Dick Beattie, who was then probably the General Counsel of HEW, down there. But I'm not sure I ever had a direct conversation with him on that subject. I just can't remember.
Let me back up a little bit and ask you about the early development of the desegregation case, with regard to North Carolina. In the spring of 1977 the case was thrust to your attention, I guess, because of the order of Judge Pratt.
Right.
Which required that your department do something and develop a set of criteria in the spring of '77. And that—the chronology of that, I gather, is somewhere between April and July, the criteria were developed. I wondering, as best as you can recollect, I know this has been fourteen years, what do you remember as being the main considerations and objectives, insofar as you had contact with the criteria. I know you —
And really—let me just preface everything I say that if the documents show something different, go by the documents.
Yeah.
And not by my memory. The objective was to promote the desegregation of
higher education. The techniques, as I recall, were to, you know, have
courses in white colleges that were not in black colleges, and
vice-versa, among other things. We expected, as a general matter, that
North Carolina would have been, since Friday was regarded as a
progressive—one of the most progressive southern educators, that North
Carolina would have been one of the first states to agree. As it turned
out they were
Made it a more complex problem, you think, from his point of view? Or your point of view also.
I don't know whether—Look, I know one thing, in my years at HEW, that when we tried to desegregate or enforce civil rights laws for women, for the disabled, for hispanics, we had virtually no resistance. When we tried to enforce the civil rights laws for blacks, we had resistance everywhere.
That was true all along —
North Carolina was no exception. That was true north, south, east, and west. But, in this case, North Carolina was by far the most resistant of the southern states. I think it was numbers. I think there was just larger numbers of blacks. Larger numbers of black universities. And that's why the resistance was larger. But you'd have to ask them. I can't judge their motives.
In general, in the negotiations, that involved the Department, there was—obviously, you were a very busy person and you delegated responsibility. At certain points you must have been involved. Did you work through the political leadership to any great extent, for example, Governor Hunt, did you —
I'm sure I talked to Governor Hunt about it. But, not —
Not a lot?
Just to urge him to do it. I mean, I talked to other southern governors.
You have to remember there was another thing going on at the same time.
I was in the middle of the anti-smoking—I was mounting the anti-smoking
campaign. And there was, you know, North Carolina was the number one
state fighting that. And that was being fought by Governor Hunt. Jesse
Helms was trying to get riders on appropriations bills to take away our
funds for any anti-smoking effort. I mean it was—so, it was kind of—I
mean, there were cartoons. In fact, I've got one on my wall. They did
cartoons of me down there. Political cartoons. So, it wasn't—just trying
to see this one.
So there was a definite connection between the desegregation case and the smoking—the whole smoking campaign.
Well, it made the political—it made my ability to use the political structure to get the colleges desegregated, it really hindered my ability to use the political structure.
One of the things that I hear a lot of, and I've talked to a lot of
people from—about this case from the University's point of view. And one
of the things that you hear a lot of is that this perception,
Well, I think you can look at the other states. I mean, I don't think North Carolina was asked to do anything that the other states weren't asked to do. I—so, in that sense I don't think they were being singled out. I mean, they were singled out in the sense that they became the only university, the only state, that wouldn't agree. And, you know, it was not easy on our part either, because you have to remember we were sitting there with Judge Pratt. I mean, a Federal judge, sitting in Washington, DC, with a clerk, or two, desegregating the school, higher education systems, of what, eleven states, or nine states?
Yes.
You know, a case that would never have occurred had the Nixon administration just gone along on some rational pace. And desegregated and enforced the law.
Did you —
I tried to get relieved, you know, from all those court orders. On the ground that we were ready to enforce the law. Because I had another court order with another judge who was running the Office of Civil Rights.
So, you were feeling considerable pressure?
Well, it was pressure from the court.
From the court?
Sure. See, at one point Joe Rauh, who was—I don't know who he was representing. Who brought that suit?
LDF.
I guess he was representing them. But, was he?
Yes.
Yeah. Joe Rauh, I think he was—was that the case in which he moved to have me held in contempt?
That's right.
Yeah. Griffin Bell sent me a hacksaw.
That's right.
You recounted that in your memoirs, as a matter of fact. Yeah. Tell me about the—what you recall about the general condition of—you mentioned there was a kind of policy of neglect toward the OCR in the Nixon administration—Nixon and Ford administration, I guess.
Yeah. Well, they just didn't enforce the civil rights laws. They didn't enforce the employment laws. And they didn't enforce the education laws. They weren't requiring school plans. And that's what brought all these cases to court.
Yeah. And so you were—one thing that was on your mind when you became Secretary was to revive the office and —
No, revive the office, and I also did—and maybe I did it in the Office
of Civil Rights case,
I see, so technically the office was under the court's control?
Right. In fact, if you go back—now, I can't—it was the other case. I wanted to change the whole system by which the Office of Civil Rights considered cases. Now, most of these are individual cases. This is not the school case. And in that situation—and I was inhibited in making that much efficient, by the court order. So, I took a few shots at the judge, at some Bar Association meeting, somewhere along the way, and he got very pissed-off.
Uh-huh. How did you perceive the office as operating? I know in your Governing America you mentioned that your predecessor, as Secretary, had warned you that the OCR was—or could have been, had the potential to be semiautonomous, independent —
I didn't, I mean, I tried as best I could to bring that whole department under control. I put a very good guy in there, David Tatel.
And were you confident —
The first General Counsel I named was Peter Libassi, who had run the office in the Johnson administration, in the end. So I thought I had the ability to control it. I think we brought it under greater control, you know.
In the lower bureaucracy, mid-level bureaucracy was —
Well, I mean, it's a combination of leading them and controlling them.
Yeah.
I wished I was as good as they think I was now.
Yeah. Tell me about your sense of being in sync with David Tatel. Did you always feel as though whatever he did was something that you were happy with?
No. I mean, like anybody else, I mean, we agreed and disagreed. I mean, I had a lot of very bright, I believe, very bright, talented, and aggressive people working for me. And by no means, with respect to any of the them, did we always agree.
Yeah. That's something you wanted, I guess, was disagreement.
I wanted guys to tell me what they thought.
Yeah. Yeah. What about the White House? Tell me about the—obviously the White House was under considerable pressure on this case and the tobacco case.
I think I recounted everything —
Everything you recall in the book?
Everything I recall about the White House in the book.
Yeah.
And you can rely on that. I mean, I checked, everything I wrote in that, every quote in that book I checked with the people that said them.
Oh, did you? And I was wondering was you—you have a very specific account there, was that based memory totally, or?
On which now?
In the book.
On the OCR thing?
Yes.
No. I checked with people.
Oh, you checked with people directly.
Yeah. That was not—I had a young man working for me, I guess, for about eighteen months.
I see.
— on that. And we called people. I'm very proud of that. I mean, I—in
that whole book
Yeah. Tell me about the breakdown of the negotiations in 1979. I don't want you to repeat what you said in the book, but I'd like for you to elaborate. One of the things —
I can't even—I have no—I just don't remember.
Don't remember? Yeah.
I'm sorry. Have you talked to Dick Beattie?
No I haven't. I've been kind of—I wrote him a letter today, as a matter of fact.
Okay. You should talk to him. You talked to Tatel. You might also talk
to Hale Champion.
Is there anyone else who comes to mind that —
Those are the ones I remember.
Those are the key ones. Let me ask you just one final question about this case. In retrospect, do you think there is anything you would have done differently? In terms of prosecuting the case? Or in terms of—this might be an unfair question, but—
Well, I just don't—I'd have to go back into it. I mean, with the things
we could have done better, I'm sure there were things. But I think under
the circumstances we did it about as well as we could. In my own mind I
always had misgivings about having a federal district judge sitting in
Washington desegregating school districts in eleven states, or whatever
it was, around the country, and the ability to do that intelligently and
fairly. Two, I never understood the kind of wholesale resistance—I mean,
you know, I sent Tatel down—we had—you know, I sent Tatel and somebody
else down there to go visit these black schools because I thought if we
could get
The black colleges, of course, had a certain set of vested interests here.
Well, absolutely. And that created its own set of problems that I didn't mention that. But that was true everywhere. Now, maybe the numbers in North Carolina made that a little more difficult. That was true everywhere. They had their own bureaucracies. They wanted to run their own universities. They were all scared they'd get swallowed up.
Right. Did you have much, I mean, what was exactly the role of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund?
I just couldn't tell you.
It wasn't anything that you —
Nothing that reached me.
That reached you? Yeah.
Have you talked to Tatel?
He—we're going to talk eventually. I'm looking forward to talking to
him. Let me go back to the Task Force, the White House Task Force. The
Task Force didn't get anywhere, I gather. The report that
Well, I'd have to go look at it. I mean, we had a lot of task forces. As far as what you mean by adopted, in terms of it—it had one important effect, which was that we had ammunition to keep the government focused on putting its education money in the hands of poor people. That was important. When you get down to specific recommendations I think you find with respect to all of those task forces, and there was scores of scores of them in the Johnson years, that we did—we accomplished most of what seemed to make sense to us.
Uh-huh, I see. Any final sort of reflections on Bill Friday that you'd like to add— I mean, general sorts of things?
No, I mean, I think he's—I think it's—is he still alive?
Yes.
Have you interviewed him?
Yes, at some length.
Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I think he always struck me as a first-class guy. And I think he was just, you know, caught in something.
Yeah. And was caught between forces that—inside North Carolina that affected his —
Yeah. Black colleges. Difficult board.
Yeah.
Difficult political situation.
Sure.
And at that stage in his life, among the things he was willing to stick his head up for, this was not one of them.
Yeah. And your dealings with the board, you found the board to be, or your impression of the board, at least, was that it was pulling him?
Yeah, you have to—Tatel and Beattie will both be very good on that.
They'd have more detail?
A lot.
Well, this has been very helpful and I certainly appreciate you taking the time. I know you're —
Okay. And as I said I'd add Hale Champion to your list of people.
Okay. And he's at Harvard.
Yeah. Harvard School of Govern—Kennedy School of Government.
Do you think Libassi is —
I'd add Libassi. Yeah, I'm sure he was involved in that.
Yeah. Okay.
Alrighty.
Thank you again.
Okay. Good luck and I look forward to seeing your book.
Okay, I'll send it to you.
All right, thank you.
Thanks a lot.
Bye-bye.
END OF INTERVIEW