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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-0157, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern
Historical Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill”
After building a resume advocating for desegregation and other racial justice issues, Martin Gerry became director of the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) in 1975, immediately and aggressively moving to force southern states to integrate and to begin reversing the effects of segregation. He made North Carolina an area of focus in part because he felt that the state had the will and the means to successfully integrate. The results disappointed Gerry, and he recounts one example of such disappointing progress: the debate over locating a veterinary school at a historically black institution. Such a decision would have sent a strong signal that North Carolina was ready to offer its black schools a slice of its educational reputation. But by placing the veterinary school at North Carolina State University, the state suggested that it was ready to fight to maintain the supremacy of traditionally white institutions. This interview offers a glimpse of one individual's struggle with dismantling segregation in the South from the top down.
Martin Gerry recalls his efforts, as the director of the Office of Civil Rights, to accelerate desegregation in North Carolina.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
Yes, this is William Link at History Department at UNCG. I have an appointment to speak with Mr. Gerry over the telephone.
Hold on.
Thank you.
Dr. Link?
Yes.
Hi. Sorry to keep you waiting.
That's okay.
We're just finishing up a meeting.
Yeah. I appreciate you giving me the extra time here.
Do you mind if I just put you on the speaker phone for a minute?
That's fine.
There's nobody else here.
Okay. The last time we were talking about some things that I wanted to kind of follow-up on them. First of all, I really didn't have the opportunity to ask you to tell me a little bit more about your background, how you got to be director of OCR.
Oh, sure. I'm a lawyer, and graduated from law school—I graduated from law school in '67, went to work for a Wall Street law firm. The name of the law firm then was Nixon Montrose[?], Guthrie, Alexander and Mitchell.
Oh, yeah.
And then in '68 Nixon got elected president. '69, I came to work fully in March right after the inauguration, in the Office for Civil Rights as the executive assistant to the director, who was then Leon Panetta, now a California congressman.
Right.
And then Leon was there for about a year. He got fired by Nixon. I went to work as a special assistant to Elliot Richardson, who'd become the secretary, and did that for—during Richardson's tenure, which was I recall, was about two and a half years, maybe three years. Then Wienburger[?] became secretary and I worked again for about a year for Wienburger as a special assistant. And then I became deputy director of OCR during Wienburger's tenure in 1974. And I became acting director in '75, and director in late '75.
What were the—was—Holmes had back trouble and that's why you —
Yeah. Holmes went out in '75 with some pretty serious back trouble and then left.
I see. So he went out and then you were deputy—you were acting director?
Yeah, for about nine months or eight months.
And then he came back briefly and then —
Yeah, for about two months, and then—I'm trying to think of the exact timing—I guess my nomination went up in the fall, I guess, of late '75.
I see.
I was appointed, effective sometime like November of '75.
Okay.
I think he was back for like maybe two months late summer, early fall,
something like that.
Sorry. He went back to the Hill?
Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Tell me a little bit about your—from the period that you first came to work with Panetta, to the time that you became director.
Sure. Well, when I worked with Panetta, as I said, I was really his executive assistant, so I kind of got my fingers into a lot of things. I was somewhat involved in early discussions on higher education. Sol Albrighter was then the division director for our higher education. Burt Taylor was his deputy. But most of my work for Panetta was on Hispanics. I wrote something called the May Twenty-fifth Memo, which became the vehicle for civil rights investigations focused on discrimination against Hispanics, particularly related to language. And then I ran, from 1970 into the—my tenure with Richardson, I kind of ran a whole project that dealt with eliminating language barriers in public schools.
I see. And then you came back at OCR to —
Well, I was really never—I mean, I was technically away from it, but, you see, the director of OCR is the secretary's special assistant for civil rights. And after Leon left they kind of divided up the functions and so I sort of ended up doing that—something like that job. So I was always involved with OCR. When Stan Pottinger was there and even when Peter took over. But I was—I tended to get assigned to things that were less just OCR related and more department related. For example, I worked on the Human Subjects Regulation that was done on, you know, experimentation on human subjects?
Right.
I was on a task force on the classification and assignment of exceptional children, so I got into educational policy quite a bit. And then I did some special work for Richardson. I did the Boston school case for Richardson, which was a desegregation case.
Right.
And, you know, sort of—I wouldn't call it trouble-shooter. Some might say it was more like trouble-maker. But, that was more like the work I did there. I worked a fair amount with Dick Darmon on what was called Allied Services, which was a coordination of services to families. During Wienburger's tenure, well, for a lot of it I was acting or upstairs, because Peter was having health problems. And I tended to do—he and I tended to do more sort of sorting out of the work. He always did higher education. But I did a lot more of just sort of management of education civil rights, even though I wasn't technically in the office. But Pottenger, he ran all that.
I see.
And then, of course, I sort of, you know, when I was deputy director, I was sort of the operational head. So, it all —it's hard to describe—but the areas—I did a lot of work on in-school discrimination issues like discipline, ability grouping and tracking, assignment of kids to special education classes because of race. And then I did a couple of large health cases: California, welfare discrimination against Hispanics in California and in Connecticut. And, you know, it was more—I was really the policy development person, is probably the best way to put it. And in fact from 1970 to 1974, or '5, plus some new stuff that we did.
OCR included, I gather, a good number of attorneys?
Oh, yeah. We had our own division actually. And then there were a few people who actually worked for OCR, too, directly. But there were about, at one point, thirty, thirty-five lawyers in the general counsel's division that was assigned to civil rights. And then our staff probably, oh, we had eleven hundred people, I'd say, probably at the time. Maybe a 100 lawyers, spread around the country.
And that would include the regional offices?
Yeah.
Tell me a little bit more about the setup at OCR and particularly with regard to Higher Education. There was an office of higher education?
Well, that changed. So let me just take you through the—as far as I can remember—the structures. When I first got there, there was a Division of Higher Education which was at the level right below the deputy and director, and that was ran by a guy Sol Albrighter, and he'd been put in place by the Johnson administration. He left relatively soon after—not under any pressure from us, but—and Burt Taylor was the deputy of the division. And I don't remember the exact years here. Then we had—first we had Mary Berry came in as the division director, later to gain fame at the Civil Rights Commission.
Yeah.
And then after her we had a woman named Mary—oh, what was her
name? Another Mary. I can't think of her last name. She was
there during most of the rest of the period and then she left and
Burt—I'm trying to think of my
years—probably from my '70—say Sol was
there maybe '69 and '70, and part of
'70. And then Mary Berry came—well, I think Burt
acted for a year or two and then Mary Berry came in maybe
'73, stayed for about six months, she
Uh-huh.
And so there was—that function was first put in contract compliance as a separate division. Then it was merged with the other part of the, you know, the higher education issues that you're familiar with, and that was made a new division. And so that part of this business was going in and out of being in Education and not being in Education.
I see. One of the people —
I'm sorry I can't be much more specific. But that's roughly what happened.
No, that's very helpful. I appreciate that. One person that—Burt Taylor, must—seems to have been the key person?
Absolutely. Burt can tell the story from the beginning to all the way through.
And he started in—it must have been the Johnson years, I suppose?
Yes. He came in—his brother is Bill Taylor. I don't know if you know him. But Bill was probably the—one of the two or three leading civil rights lawyers in the country, and ran the civil rights program at Catholic University in Burton. I think, through his brother, started off very early in the civil rights movement. So I'm sure it was the Johnson's years.
I see. Did you find a sort of unity of opinion, or—I mean, there must have been a diversity of opinion within the bureaucracy about how to approach higher education desegregation?
Oh, there was a difference of opinion. But it was mostly outside of the division. Lloyd Henderson, who was the division—the education division director, and I, who were frequently at odds on a lot of other things, I think, tend to approach higher education more like elementary and secondary education than the people who are in the division, the higher ed. division. Within the higher education division I think there was more unanimity. Because Sol Albrighter and Burt Taylor were really the architects of the—uh, well, let's call it, for want of a better term, "magnet school approach." The reorganization of curriculum. The kind of "attract students of other races" idea?
Right.
Obviously that's not the approach we were using in elementary and secondary education.
Right.
So there was a difference of opinion there. But it never got anywhere because the decision-making didn't involve the litera[?]. You know, the higher education division and director, deputy director, would meet, make decisions without us. And I think to the extent that either of us had voiced the opinions that I'm talking about, or that we did. None of the directors had—I mean, Leon, I don't know. But the other two didn't have any—they were very strongly supportive of Burt's approach, or Sol Albrighter's approach.
I see. And so there tended to be a continuity of approach there, or continuous approach?
Well, there always was. Because even when I took over we were far too far down that line to go back and re-visit that. When I came in I never even seriously thought about changing the fundamental approach. I was more concerned really, and stayed mostly concerned, with trying to make the approach which we used actually work, even if I didn't have the greatest of confidence that it would work. But we had enough trouble just getting people to do that, let alone trying to raise, you know, a completely new concept again. So, it's pretty much over by the time I took over.
It was already set? The policy was already set.
I mean, you know, whatever issues there were, you know, just were gone.
Later on, well, after you had left office, the focus of the OCR's approach towards the University of North Carolina came to be to emphasis the elimination of duplication, unnecessary program duplication?
Yeah, that was part of that same concept.
But it wasn't advanced that much in the, say, mid-70s, was it?
Well, it came up. But, you know, I mean, the key thing is, we talked about before, with North Carolina was the Veterinary School. And that wasn't a duplication issue, that was a location issue.
Right.
So you're right in the sense that—it was discussed with North Carolina and other states. And there probably is some paperwork in which they—most of the states, frankly, made some minimal efforts in that regard, but nothing that would be—was very substantial. And the big point of contest—see, the problem with that argument is that—and I grew up around a university so I'm maybe a little bit more familiar with where it comes from—but the minute you argue that there's course duplication every university will argue with you that what they're teaching is different that what everybody else is teaching.
Yeah, that's right.
So, you know, it's like academic freedom. It's a
pointless argument. I mean, it may be conceptually right, but in
practical terms you getting any university-based administrator to agree
to that—and I don't think we probably ever did to
any great extent. That's why—see, I had a lot of
skepticism with the—much of the approach we were using. I
suppose to some
No.
But he had been—he came to the job having been, I think, twenty years the dean of the faculty at Harvard. And I worked very closely with Labor on an Affirmative Action side. And Dunlap is an industrialist economist by background. He and George Schultz, and Clark Kerr, and a few other people formed a little group, about the same age. And Dunlap's approach was don't—you know, "Too much has been made of looking at universities as totally different types of institutions, and we should apply, for the most part, the same concepts." And that's exactly what OCR never did, with respect to desegregation. We really did—we tried to be sensitive, and that would be what would be argued, to the peculiar characteristics of the university without at the same time then being prepared to deal with all the hot-air that comes with it about, you know, "Well, we couldn't change that course because that's part of—" You know, you get arguments like, "If we eliminate a course we couldn't give a degree in sociology." You know, that kind of thing.
Right.
"You don't want us to not give degrees, do you?" So, I mean, you were either driven up against the—I mean, the two horns of the dilemma were that you were going to deal with admissions, or you're going to deal with academic freedom.
Right.
And I personally, frankly, I think it would have been easier to deal with admissions.
In retrospect, what do you think should have been done?
Well, I think—my own sense would have been that, first, the idea that significant numbers of white students were going to chose to go to formally black colleges because of course enhancement, or strengthening the campuses, and all of that was relatively unrealistic. Probably in the United States the best example I've seen of that happening is actually Howard, right here in the District. And the reason it happened, that is why there are significant numbers of white students at Howard, mostly in the graduate school, is because they created an economically enticing, you know, moderately high quality opportunity, and didn't incur—and within the district in that area there were no other alternatives. And so, in fact, you did get significant increases in a traditionally black institution. But I don't think—but that was because there was no other law school to go to at the time that people could afford. I mean, you could go to Georgetown, or you could go to George Washington, but you're going to have to pay money for that. Do you see what I'm saying?
Right.
So as long as the state operated a public predominantly white graduate
program, the likelihood that any of those kids would, in significant
numbers, go to a traditionally black campus, I think, was remote. And,
in fact, I don't think it's happened. I would have
focused, and there are a lot of political reasons I think that the
department didn't, but I would have focused, in other words,
on eliminating—first, some of the black colleges needed to be
eliminated. And I understand the argument that they were havens and all
that, but some of them just didn't make sense from an
administrative standpoint, in my
Yeah. And early on it becomes—well, the court sort of involves itself.
Well, the court's funny. The court never really got a good case opposing a black college, which was accompanied with a good program of what to do about the students. In other words, what happened is you'd say, "Well, okay, let's close this black college." And the easy states—not North Carolina, it was one of the hardest. But, you know, there are several states that just had one black campus. Arkansas, for example, at Pine Bluff.
Right.
Well, you know, the answer is that a very good program could have been put together for the black students that left Pine Bluff. Pine Bluff was not running a good program. It really wasn't a redeemable facility. But the pol—you know, and I think in the long run you could have had at least a relatively decent racial mix of kids in the other Arkansas campuses. They wouldn't do it. And, you know, and what happened—the other thing that goes with this is that the people who were fighting it were able to form relatively unholy alliances with the civil liberties groups, and black educator groups. So you face this weird political mix of, you know, "segregation now and forever" people being joined by groups of black professionals. Or black academicians arguing the same line. So I'm not saying it was ever politically easy to do that. But I do think in retrospect, and this is all in retrospect, that had we started that down the court that way—I mean, you know, in the history of Southern school desegregation, elementary and secondary, we closed hundreds of black schools.
Right.
I mean as a practical matter. And many of them were terribly inferior campuses.
Yeah.
And in those situations people in the neighborhood didn't
like it because their kids had to go further away. But there was a
history of doing that. And why we just chose to ignore that whole
approach in higher education, I don't know. If you look at
the financing of institutions now—and, of course, people are
closing schools right and left. But, you know, as I said, by the time I
got there it was well underway and there was certainly no going back and
revisiting that. So we were kind of stuck with this making the schools
more attractive. Now, I think that the key thing that was a waste of
time, in some cases, was seriously trying to believe you were going to
attract large numbers of white students by simply fixing up the black
schools. In North Carolina, for example, that would be totally
unreasonable because there are too many choices for those kids. You
know, there were plenty of—there's a whole range of
predominantly white schools, academic range, for them to chose from, so
why would they do that? And there's a statementization[?]
that clearly went with—social stigmatization that clearly went
with those, you know, the black schools. So, that was—I think,
of the things that were more and less fruitful I think that was among
the less fruitful things. Yet, when I went to, as I
Right. Did you —
Again, that campus would have made some sense closing, but then the question would have been, "What do you do with the students?" And there was, I have to tell you, also, frankly, some two-track racism involved here, which is that there was—that in some cases my sense was, and part of this goes with, you know, some of the implied academic snobbery of Chapel Hill, more than the other campuses, was that "These people really aren't our people. They really don't belong here." There's a definite desire to cream the best of the black students, but I think there was, at the same time, a very strong sense of elitism that—and the University of Virginia is that way, too. When you talked about Chapel Hill, as opposed to the whole system, it was clearly there.
So the feeling would be that —
"They aren't qualified. They're not fit to be here."
Right. And you want to maintain the black campuses as kind of nets to hold the ones that shouldn't be here.
Yeah. And it was really a two-track—now, I think if you'd asked the people at Chapel Hill are they fit to be at North Carolina State they might have said, "Yes."
Yeah.
But, you know, there was this very much Chapel Hill—I think of all the institutions I think Chapel Hill in North Carolina and U.Va. are probably the two, well, they are probably the two most elite institutions in the states we were dealing with. I'm not shocked. I went to an institution that's not all that different either.
Yeah.
But that was behind some of this. And we did at one point, at Chapel Hill, and several places, talk about enrichment programs and special high school programs. Things to actually deal with the qualifications of incoming freshmen that would have eliminated some of these, well, I'm sure were, significant differences. But I don't really think there was a whole lot of interest at Chapel Hill.
Yeah.
I wouldn't blame it all on Bill Friday, because I think that had more to do with that campus than it had to do with the attitude—and I'm sure that the system people had a lot of problems trying to keep these campuses in any kind of order.
Yeah. They still do.
Oh, sure. And, I mean, I'm familiar with the California system so I'm sure it can't be totally different.
Yeah. Well, it's—yeah, actually —
I don't envy them, that job. And I'm sure that they had a lot of trouble getting these people at Chapel Hill to even seriously discuss it.
Yeah.
I think that that—but that, you know, interestingly, in the course of southern school, college, desegregation, really I think outside of the some of the other social roles, the only two institutions that probably faced that problem that much in terms of admissions criteria were U.Va. and Chapel Hill.
Do you think the—to what extent do you think that the secondary and elementary model was useful in attempting to tackle the problem of higher ed?
Well, in North Carolina it was interesting because, of course, it's used in the—at the community college, the technical school level. That is to say, it's open admission.
Right.
You know, the usual—the old academic freedom argument. When you look at the back tier, the AA level, North Carolina has one of the most extensive, and certainly one of the better quality, universal higher education systems.
Right.
So in North Carolina, it seems to me, it was already being used. And one of the things we kept trying to do was to talk to the people at the second tier level, if you want to call it that, higher education tier level, about creating some kind of parallel roots for the kids who went into that first level. Now, I think that's very much—it follows what we did in many cases in elementary and secondary education. I think it was a quite feasible approach. At least it appeared to be. Now how politically real it was in North Carolina, I don't know. But there seems to be a very strong community-based system in North Carolina, more than any other southern state, of these higher education institutions. Now, whether you could have ultimately done what was proposed for awhile in California, and is still being played around with, which is to be getting this sort of sorting out, you know, of the first two years of higher education from the last two. There have been proposals for quite a long time that, you know, turned Berkeley, for example, into a sort of an upper undergraduate institution and let some of the other colleges provide the first two years.
Oh, yeah.
Create that kind of model. That might have been the beginning of an
answer in North Carolina, I think. Because I think California actually
is the other state with North Carolina. California and North Carolina
probably are two of the most extensive systems. You could have, in other
words, have begun to channel black and white students through some of
these institutions by—that are quite numerous and
community-based, and created at least an alternate route into higher
education. It's the place—you know, the University
of Minnesota, there are a couple that they do something called the
general college. But there are several models that could have been
probably been pursued. How much I knew about that at the time
I'm not sure. But I think that in retrospect, if I had it to
do over again, I think I would have probably spent
Yeah. Well, one of the contradictions surely that must have faced you about North Carolina was the appearance of absolute central control.
Right.
I mean, legally the Board of Governors at the University has total control over everything and yet matched against that is a very strong traditional of local, campus-wide —
Well, you know that sort of—that sounds a lot like California to me.
California, too?
Because California has a very strong, you know—a local control pretty well—though I suspect they don't even have the rhetoric that they have at North Carolina. But, yeah, you're right. Well, especially when—I thought Bill Friday—well, first Bill Friday himself frankly, in terms of style and approach, was uncommonly skilled, given his counterparts in other states. And the staff were—they looked like people who were in charge and running things. I agree with that. And I'm sure that that papered over very thinly a whole lot of major problems they had. But —
Well, I can tell you that as a faculty person at a campus that there's very little central involvement with campus affairs, even though to an outsider —
Not now but at the times—I mean, part of this is, you know, had I had—and I suspect it would have been helpful—if we'd had more staff that we had, more experience with these institutions, it probably would have been helpful to understand that. Although, even if we'd understood it we had little choice but to deal with the systems anyway.
Sure. Yeah. Did you—you must have made a lot of trips to North Carolina?
Three, maybe.
Three.
Well, it wasn't that, I don't think. Well, you know, as I told you, I made—I think the last of the three—Mr. Friday was anxious to find someone else to deal with. So, while he, in fact, didn't get me fired, I don't think I ever went back to North Carolina again, although my staff did.
This would have been the fall of '75? Thereabouts?
Yes, that was the fall of '75.
Fall of '75. Tell me about how you think your approach, once you became director of OCR, differed from that of Peter Holmes, with regard to higher education?
Well, you know, Peter's not a lawyer.
Right.
And I have a lot of regard for Peter. He's a friend and I liked working with Peter. But he's just not a lawyer and Peter—Peter was the congressional relations director in the office before he was director.
I see.
So Peter's background is much more focused on the congress, public relations. And my background at the time, and I think maybe even now is much more focused—I see this job—I see the OCR job as more of a prosecutor's job and less of a sort of social arbiter's job. So, you know, the first thing I did was I moved against Maryland to cut off federal funding. Now, of course, we hadn't moved against anybody up until then. So my approach, I suppose, differed in that regard. Judge Norford[?] played it up, enjoining us.
Yeah.
But my sense was that we had to fish or cut bait. We'd been—when I took over we'd been through several rounds of negotiations. And, of course, as you know, we were under the Adam's court order.
Right.
And I talked excessively with Secretary Wienburger about that and, ultimately, later on with people from the White House during the Ford administration. And my sense was, you know, was that we had to either agree and get it over with, or go ahead and take—do enforcement. But otherwise this thing was going to drag out as a kind of festering wound and everybody was going to have to keep paying massive political prices as we went through round after round of these negotiations, and round after round of court orders telling us that we weren't doing a good job. So, does that give you a kind of a sense?
Yeah.
I mean, it wasn't so much as it was different from Peter. I was later than Peter, and my sense was we had an election coming up in '76, which the president lost, of course, and we ought to get the damned thing done.
Right. So you wanted some kind of resolution?
Yeah. I wanted either to negotiate out a plan that we thought was good and then go defend it. Or, if we didn't think we could get that, cite them and have a hearing. And if they wanted a hearing, then fine, it'd be okay. If they lost a hearing then, you know, we'd have a much stronger legal hand that compelled what kind of relief that we wanted. I didn't pick North Carolina. I picked Maryland, however, as the place to start.
But in the case of North Carolina that—your handling of the vet school case was sort of related to that kind of approach, in other words —
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, mainly because, you know, once they made the decision and did it, you can never undo these things.
Right.
So you had a kind of enforcement problem. Part of the problem is that administrative enforcement is an incredibly slow process. So if, you know, if you're going to create this veterinary school and I tell you, "Well, I'm going to withhold your Title VI money if you do that," by the time you get a final decision on the administrative report, you'll have three graduating classes.
Right.
And you'll keep running the school because I can't hold up your money while the hearings are going on.
Right.
That was a very good example of where the judicial approach and the enforcement approach was a—perhaps even a—I was very strongly in favor of some kind of an injunction. You know, where you go to court quickly before somebody does that and says, "Look, before you locate this veterinary school, judge, let's talk about it." That's one of the real weaknesses of the Title VI process, is that rarely can you do that.
Yeah, especially so with regard to universities.
Well, I don't know. My problem was that the assistant attorney general at the time was Stan Pottenger.
Oh, yeah.
Who had a whole history with North Carolina of his own. So, Stan was certainly not interested in doing that.
What was his history with North Carolina?
Well, he had been director of OCR, you know, before Peter.
Right.
So, you know, I don't know what exactly with North Carolina, but Stan was part and parcel of the whole, you know, "play it out over a long period of time approach." Peter and I had considerably—considerably closer in our opinions of the higher education system than Stan Pottenger and I ever were. Stan represents much more—well, frankly, I don't want—well, it is critical. Stan was looked at it, I think, much more politically. He wanted to get through it, you know, get all the way through it. So, as a result, of course, none of it ever got resolved.
I see. Going back to the vet school case.
Yeah.
That first came to your attention at the initiative of the regional office?
Well, you know, Peter was director when that came up.
Right.
And I'm trying to think of how those meetings were—let me just think for a minute how that works. Probably, although it could have very easily came from Julius Chambers, through Jean Fairfax at the Legal Defense Fund.
Yeah.
So it was a pretty open line of communication with Jean. I like Jean very much and I know Peter did.
To your office?
I kept seeing them in Judge Pratt's court every other week so.
They'd keep you informed.
They did keep us informed. They were very effective. And they were very concerned about that issue. I think justifiably.
Yes. It was initially presented by the—by William Thomas, who was the —
Right. The regional director.
— the regional director, presented to the Board of Governors.
I can't remember the name of the division director down there. But Lamare Clemmons, as I recall, was involved quite a bit. But, you know, it was some combination of those two forces. There was a lot of—the regional office was also very closely, you know, in contact with Legal Defense Fund, too. But as far as the discussions there was regional people involved and internally that would have been it, but externally we certainly had discussions with the Legal Defense Fund.
Was—at what point did the national office sort of take the case over?
I honestly don't remember. I mean, as far as months or anything like that.
Yeah.
All I remember was that there had been an effort at the regional level to get some kind of an agreement to hold off—at least to hold off on the veterinary school.
I see.
Which had been turned down. But I don't, you know, I can't really tell you a lot more than that. But there was a history. It wasn't—we didn't start at the national office.
You said earlier that OCR received a lot of pressure on that case.
Well, on North Carolina, not so much just the veterinary medicine line.
North Carolina generally?
Yeah, sure.
And that shaped the resolution of the case? Is that accurate to say? That the vet —
That's hard, you know—the point is you get—I mean, it's a political job.
Yeah.
It's very rare you have any major civil rights case where there aren't political pressures from somebody. I don't really think it had a lot to do with shaping it, in a sense, except in the very large sense that it had shaped the whole approach. But it wasn't a situation where we wanted to do something, we were stopped politically. I don't remember that happening. Not over the veterinary school and not when Peter was there. Now when I was there I was stopped from moving against North Carolina formally by the secretary.
On the vet school case?
Yeah.
Yeah.
But that was later.
And do I have this right? The actual resolution of the vet school case was under—was when Peter Holmes came back briefly, is that right?
Right.
So there was an interlude there where the case was resolved and took a very different turn than it had earlier in the summer of '75?
Right.
And that was the end of the case. Of course, as you said earlier, once something like this becomes resolved officially you can't bring it up again.
Right. Exactly.
Once the department officially approves —
Well, you know, the thing about it that was so important
wasn't just the decision. The decision had some importance.
But the symbol—symbolically here was a very prized sort of
academic possession. That was what really made it important. Had it
been, you know, the School of Social Work or something, it might have
been different. But within this sort of hierarchy of, I guess, college
administrative snobbery, veterinary schools are pretty prized things.
So, it really was a kind of bigger-than-itself issue, if you know what I
mean. It was the university system of North Carolina deciding, from my
viewpoint, whether they were actually seriously going to consider even
putting a program that would unquestionably attract white students to a
black site. There
Yeah.
So it wasn't a situation with one there and one here. It really did come down to an either or.
The vet school coincided with the creation of a second state medical school.
Yeah, I think so.
Was there ever any consideration about, say, locating the medical school?
You know, I remember it coming up but I don't remember any kind serious discussion of it. I don't know why. I wouldn't have remembered except that you just mentioned that and I do remember that discussion. I remember something about a dental school, too. I don't know what that meant. But I don't think, at least not while I was involved, was there any serious discussion about doing anything about the medical school.
Because that's one of the things that UNC people raised was that, you know, why isn't HEW concerned about —
A good question and I wished I could give you the answer. Either—it may be that it was a fait compli. I mean, one of the big things about the veterinary school, too, was that it hadn't been done yet.
Yeah.
Because, you know, once they put the foundation in you can forget it, politically.
Right.
I mean, you're not going to stop and shift the medical—or veterinary school that's literally been built and is starting to open its classrooms. I mean, it's too late. I mean, legally, conceptually you might be able to say you could do it, but politically it would have been impossible. So the timing was a big issue on the veterinary school.
Of course, the vet school had a lot of history behind it, too. It was really a political—?
Oh, yeah. It was clear. You see, that was the thing. That's why it was so symbolically important. It clearly a political decision, not an academic decision, that was being made.
Yeah.
And it was clearly a political decision, from our view-point, that reinforced the traditional identification of these institutions.
Yeah. So the vet school case was of very high importance to you?
Yeah.
Yeah.
As I said —
As a symbolic thing?
— simply because of itself, but partly because I thought it was—I think if you'll look at it this way, I think. Had the reverse decision been made, that is, had the system decided to locate the veterinary school at a predominately black campus, and gone ahead with it, the course of higher education opportunities in the state of North Carolina would have changed. I mean, I think that would have been a statement in a political—in political terms, it might have cost Friday his job for all I know, too, but that would have—would have sent a real signal to the people in the state, the brokers in the state, that something serious was about to happen in terms of higher education opportunities in these traditionally black schools. Because it would have, you know what I'm—it was very important in a way that a lot of other decisions that would seem to be as important weren't. Because they didn't carry the kind of punch with it.
Right.
Now, the decision as to where to put a second medical school in the state when it was made, I'm sure, I would have considered it just as important. But all I can recollect is that it already had been made and we let it go, or it was already half-implemented or something.
How much, generally speaking, specifically speaking, how much White House contact was there on the North Carolina case? Was there —
I got very little. I had a very good relationship with the White House during the Ford years, and I never got any real pressure from the White House. In fact, the White House, you know, ultimately put me in the job over Friday's objections. The secretary was prepared to exceed[?] with them.
I see.
I got very little on North Carolina from the White House.
The appointment of the director would be, was that a White House appointment?
Technically, it was a secretary's appointment. But all senior level appointments had to be cleared with the White House personnel office.
I see.
Now, if you want me to tell you what was really going on. David Matthews was in a large part a figurehead secretary. And most of the important domestic policy decisions while he was secretary were made by the domestic policy council.
Oh, I see.
Through one, or two, or three people, who were all, obviously, at the White House, and by the deputy director of OMB, who was at the White House. So really, I worked for them in practical terms, and they made the decision on who to hire and fire.
I see. And so you had, in fact, a great deal of autonomy?
Well —
Or independence from the secretary?
There was somebody who worked here who also was sort of my day-to-day supervisor/mentor, not on paper, who was an assistant secretary here. But, you know, I had in some ways—it was probably about the same autonomy but I just had—I had a lot more distance, is probably the best way to put it. However, on civil rights, I worked very closely with them and stayed in touch with them pretty—because most of the issues I was involved with were very sensitive. But there—but they were mostly Nelson Rockefeller's staff people.
I see.
That he brought into the Ford administration. Jim Cannon, who was the chairman of the Domestic Policy Counsel. But the person I worked mostly with was the general counsel, Dick Parsons.
From the Domestic Policy Counsel?
Yeah. And then the other person who was very much involved in making key decisions was Paul O'Neal, who was the deputy director of OMB.
I see.
And they were all three super, first-rate people. The best team I've seen in the government, to tell you the truth.
David Matthews —
In Joseph Califano's memoirs, he quotes David Matthews' advising him when he came in as secretary, when Califano came in as secretary, that he should watch out for the OCR and they're—that they're very difficult to control down there.
Yeah.
Califano, from everything I can see, certainly heeded it.
He did. Yeah.
I think so. He controlled OCR pretty tightly.
And while he says in his memoirs that he was determined, therefore, to exert secretarial control over the office.
Yeah. Well, that's right. That's right. You see, the interesting thing, I think if you—I don't think Elliot Richardson - yeah, I think he's written some. Because, you see, if you read Wienburger's or Richardson's memoirs, you might get a very different statement. You know, it's always attractive to say the secretary ought to tightly control the OCR. But I think, and I know Elliot Richardson's view, and I think Capp's would be, yes and no. At sometimes it's very convenient that the secretary doesn't tightly control OCR. If you know what I mean.
Yeah.
Because you want the secretary to have some distance. One of the key things of working in government at this level, and I say that's true today, that, you know, the job is to give the secretary the good decisions and you take the bad ones.
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[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
But there's some subtleties to it. So want you really probably ultimately—if I were going to give advice it would be put somebody in charge who you trust, but don't stay too close to the action, and always reserve to yourself some flexibility to respond when unexpected political pressure hits you. That's the way I think it was done best by Richardson and Wienburger both.
In the case of Califano your perception—you said last time —
Oh, he was a bull in a china shop. I mean, he came in here and, you know, banged chairs and yelled at people. You know, I know the people who had my job, the two people under him, quite well, and I think he was—well, you know what happened. Basically, they went out of business during the Califano years. I mean, it's easy now to think of the Reagan administration as the end of the civil rights enforcement era. But the truth is it was the Carter administration.
Yeah.
And it was mostly Califano. It wasn't Pat Harris.
So David Tatel was really the last effective OCR —
I think—or even—I did fifty-six—I mean, this is one statistic. But I think I commenced somewhere between fifty and sixty enforcement actions my last year, and there were eight total from that point to the end of the Reagan administration. Just trying to give you an idea.
That's interesting.
Now that included Carter. And I think in the Carter administration there
was something like two. Now, you can believe that everybody just decided
to do everything that they wouldn't before and that it was
all technical assistance and it was just a matter of creating a climate
of good faith. But I'm a little more skeptical of such social
changes than that. No, I think—if I were to write the book I
think the Carter administration in
Yeah. Of course, there is a big gap then, if that's true, between the rhetoric.
Oh, yeah. Well, you see, I met with Joe Califano for two days. I thought Joe Califano was a super Kennedy liberal who was—I had the same view of him that probably most of my staff did. After two days of talking to the man I knew he was so far from that. I mean, all he wanted to do in everything that we talked about was get out of it. I mean, he wanted to minimize his political risks by minimizing what was done. And I think he believed that because he had such a big reputation as a liberal he could pull it off. And to some extent he did. I mean, there's still people wondering around town talking about Joe Califano as a liberal. I don't know why.
And he made that clear? You had a clear impression about that?
Oh, it was very clear to me that all he really wanted to talk about was "how do I get out of this, and how do I get out of that?"
Yeah.
And, of course, I was busily trying to lock him into everything. So I wasn't trying to help him. And, you know, I made some efforts that were successful to keeping—in effect, lock OCR into some of these enforcement positions, if this was the Adam's case. But he wanted to get out of the whole thing.
Such as what?
I mean, for example, higher education we talked about. We talked—I was doing a major investigation of the New York City School System. He was desperate to get out of that. We were engaged in some major teacher hiring cases with Los Angeles and Chicago. He wanted to get out of all—you know, look at the politics? You know, Daley, etcetera. I mean, it was all political. Califano—of all the people I saw in my eight years in the government Califano may have been the most blatantly politically person I ever ran into.
Yeah.
Bar none.
Yeah. That's interesting. Did you have any direct contact with David Tatel?
I had met him before I took the job and I have talked to him extensively after he left the job. But when he was there I had no contact. I was sort of a poria at that point. You know, when you leave these jobs —
Yeah.
— the administrations change, so I had no contact with him.
Yeah.
His deputy was actually a close friend of mine. I did talk to her from time to time. And then she became the director after him.
That was —
Sue Brown.
Sue who?
I really had no involvement with him.
I see.
And he never talked to me about any of these issues.
I see. And so you stayed on actually into the administration and then resigned?
No, I resigned effective January twentieth. They gave me a month to kind of get my stuff out and I then took a consulting job in March with the OMB in the Carter administration. And worked for seven months on President Carter's reorganization proposal on civil rights which dealt with EEOC. And so, ironically, I went into what would have been a political job in the Carter administration but only on a temporary basis. Because I knew Father[?] Hesburg quite well and his general counsel was running the president's reorganization task force.
I see. Let me ask you just generally. This will be the last
question.
Well, you know, he's a complicated person. You know, when you asked me before, I've actually thought about it before you came. A very complicated man. And maybe you've found this in doing this piece.
Yeah.
But to characterize, because I think that—clearly was very bright. He clearly had a good deal of personal charm and a lot of political acumen. What I don't know and what we've talked about a little bit today is to what extent his hands were tied. I really never did understand the, you know, the moccasins he was in, in a sense. So that's why it's so hard to make a judgment. You know, looked at from the Jesse Helms position the man was a radical Bolshevik, probably.
Right.
Looked at from a Julius Chambers position he was a reactionary man.
Did he play his cards pretty clos