Suddenly It Was All Action

To counter criticism, a volley of civil rights initiatives

The public courtship began last month, when Assistant Attorney General William Bradford Reynolds toured the black communities in the rural Mississippi Delta to check into voting discrimination. With Jesse Jackson as his guide, the patrician Reynolds dined on catfish sandwiches and grits, listened to horror stories and, holding Jackson’s hand, sang We Shall Overcome. Then he returned to Washington and dispatched federal registrars to five Mississippi counties to register voters. It was a symbolic journey in a presidential campaign season: Reynolds, head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, has been a key target of black leaders who have complained for the past two years that the Reagan Administration has been delinquent in enforcing civil rights laws.

The trip was just a start. Suddenly last week there was action everywhere as the Administration moved to counter increasing criticism from blacks and Hispanics.

Monday. The Justice Department launched the Administration’s first school-desegregation suit, charging that Alabama has maintained a system of racial discrimination at its public colleges and universities. In blunt language, the suit filed in U.S. District Court in Birmingham alleged that Governor George Wallace and state education officials “perpetuate an unlawful dual system of higher education based on race.” The Justice Department will also soon file suits against two school districts.

Tuesday. Major new amendments to the Fair Housing Act of 1968, touted by Reagan as “an important step for civil rights,” were unveiled. They are designed to give the Justice Department more power to use the federal court system to fight individual cases of discrimination. The legislation aims to increase the number of cases settled through conciliation and the number filed by the Government against brokers, landlords and rental agents. It would also set stiff new fines, up to $50,000 for first-time offenders. Reagan’s bill will compete in Congress with an existing fair-housing bill supported by most civil rights groups.

Wednesday. The Justice Department petitioned federal courts to intervene in two suits charging that redistricting plans in two Mississippi counties are racially discriminatory. The move could delay elections scheduled in Bolivar and Adams counties on Aug. 2. The department is also considering court action in eleven other counties.

Thursday. The President signed an Executive Order calling upon each federal agency with substantial procurement and grant-making authority to develop annual plans to assist minority businesses.

Friday. The Washington Post published a letter from Attorney General William French Smith, angry about an editorial in the paper that suggested the Administration’s “spurt of activity” was prompted by a calculated worry about the 1984 campaign. Protested Smith, citing Justice Department efforts to fight racial discrimination: “Since January 1981, we have been vigorously enforcing civil rights laws.”

Many civil rights leaders and members of Congress remained unconvinced, or openly cynical. They promptly criticized the President’s fair-housing measure for omitting an element of the competing bill that they see as a key to enforcement: the creation of a system of administrative law judges to avoid the overcrowded federal court system. Complained Ralph Neas, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights: “They will have to come in with more than show.” Critics point to the President’s performance: his hesitancy to endorse the extension of the Voting Rights Act, his initial support of tax exemptions for schools, like Bob Jones University, that discriminate on the basis of race, his bid to abolish the Legal Services Corporation, and his attempts to pack the Civil Rights Commission, which had lambasted his “poor” record, with philosophically conservative appointees.

The Senate Judiciary Committee held fiery confirmation hearings last week on Reagan’s nominees to replace the trio of commissioners he fired in May. The nominees are Morris Abram, former president of Brandeis University; John Bunzel, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University; and Robert Destro, a law professor at Catholic University. They all share Reagan’s opposition to school busing and quotas.

Democratic Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware said he would not vote for the three so as to protest the “horrible signal” he feels Reagan is sending that the semi-independent commission can be stifled by a President who does not like its opinions. Other critics suggested that the Administration’s actions were a smokescreen to cover its attempt to castrate the commission’s strong voice.

If Reagan is trying seriously to neutralize black hostility, or at least appear fair-minded to concerned white voters, he has a long way to go. At the annual convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in New Orleans last week, Vice President George Bush faced a hostile reception when he tried to defend the Administration. The audience booed Bush, who conceded, “We’ve made errors in judgment. But when we’ve seen that we’re in error, we’ve moved to correct our mistakes.”

Nonetheless, N.A.A.C.P. Executive Director Benjamin Hooks, who has overcome the recent divisiveness and consolidated his power in the nation’s largest (348,000 members) civil rights organization, issued an open warning to Reagan: “Unless you change your course and show more concern for our interest, we will meet you at the ballot and there, in the classic American fashion, we will express our dissatisfaction.” Summed up Joseph Madison, director of the N.A.A.C.P.’s voter education and registration department, whose goal is to add some 2 million new voters to the rolls by Election Day 1984: “Politics is a dog-eat-dog business. Black folk can’t afford to be the bone any longer, buried by one dog and chewed up by the other.”

—By Maureen Dowd.

Reported by Anne Constable/Washington and John E. Yang/New Orleans