Word: finches
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...surprise, Southern congressmen were the first to squawk when Finch first announced the cut-off. Rep. Jamie Whitten (D-Miss.), long-time leader of the Congressional segregation troops, brought up his old proposal to deny the government its fund-cutting power. But Whitten, whose district includes two of the condemned school systems, was not as important a foe as Sen. Strom Thurmond...
...FINCH has concocted a number of plausible arguments for the grace period, the most convincing being his "urgent desire" to keep the Southern schools open while they work out desegregation plans. But Finch's obvious lack of enthusiasm for the 60-day scheme makes it clear that the idea was not his. Pressure was apparently applied, and the source of that pressure offers a clue to Nixon's role in the conflict...
Thurmond, Nixon's political creditor ever since he delivered the Southern vote at the convention and in the election, didn't waste time with any Whittenesque theatrics. Knowing where the power was, he sent a series of messages to Nixon expressing his "concern" over Finch's cut-off. After Finch gave in to the grace-period plan, Thurmond said that he thought it was wise: "We need to take more time in these things...
...civil rights forces. The liberal Atlanta Journal called the move "a costly Nixon retreat" that "slaps the face of every Southern school board . . . that has moved with great difficulty to obey the law." Six liberal Republicans in the Senate said that they hoped the decision didn't mean that Finch would flag on enforcement, and Senate Democrats threatened committee action if desegregation plans were left...
...real meaning of the grace-period decision depends on one key question: whether Finch's momentary retreat is a hint of weaker stands to come. Both Thurmond in his satisfaction and the Journal in its anguish have worked from the common assumption that it is. So have many Southern schoolmen, who now imagine that the desegregation plans they finally conjure up won't have to be too rigorous to meet Nixon administration standards...