The South: Welcome in Mississippi

THE SOUTH

On hand to greet President Richard Nixon at Gulfport, Miss. Municipal Airport last week was a nearly all white crowd of 30,000. They were in a festive, exuberant mood, despite the fact that some had waited more than five hours to see the first Chief Executive since Harry Truman to visit their state.

The President was in Mississippi to get a look at the devastation caused by Hurricane Camille. But the visit also served as a test of Nixon’s “Southern strategy,” reflected by his appointment of South Carolina Judge Clement Haynsworth Jr. to the Supreme Court and by the slower pace of school integration in the South under his Administration (see box opposite).

The test was so clearly positive as to make George Wallace envious. Cheers and rebel yells greeted Nixon, and home made signs assured him that he was warmly welcome. “Pat, you got a good man,” said one sign. “Not many Republicans here, but lots of Nixoncrats,” read another. When the President waded into the crowd to shake hands, he ignited a frenzy of affection unlike any thing seen in American politics since the campaign of the late Robert Kennedy. Adoring kids charged across police lines, girls squealed, babies cried, one woman fainted and another reached out to muss Nixon’s hair. Nixon, fight ing to stay on his feet, seemed to enjoy every moment. He signed autographs, had himself photographed with a local woman and her child, and pumped hundreds of hands before making his way back to the sanctuary of his plane.

The Administration, of course, denies that its recent actions were designed to appeal to Southern sentiment, and insists that both the court appointment and the school-desegregation decisions were made solely on their merits. Such disclaimers did not seem to have registered with his well-wishers. Not only did they cheer Nixon, but they also applauded Attorney General John Mitchell —widely regarded as the architect of the Administration’s Southern strategy —almost as enthusiastically as they did the President. “The people feel he went down the line on those school guidelines,” explained Democratic Representative G. V. (“Sonny”) Montgomery. “They feel that in his way he’s tried to help us.”

That judgment was disapprovingly shared by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. In a heavily documented 105-page report released last week, the commission accused the Administration of pulling back on school desegregation. The bipartisan body, established by Congress in 1957 and now chaired by University of Notre Dame President the Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, charged the Administration with attempting to justify its recent actions with statistics that give “an overly optimistic, misleading and inaccurate picture of the scope of desegregation actually achieved.” It described the Administration’s actions as “a major retreat in the struggle to achieve meaningful school desegregation.” Said the report: “This is certainly no time to create the impression that we are turning back, but a time for pressing forward with vigor. This is certainly no time for giving aid and comfort, even unintentionally, to the laggards … If anything, this is a time to say that time is running out on us as a nation.”