Word: mississippi
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...settled upon a desegregation policy that would concentrate upon progress through court orders rather than through Washington's second available weapon, the withholding of Health, Education and Welfare Department funds from noncomplying school districts. In August, HEW Secretary Robert Finch, supported by Attorney General lohn Mitchell, granted 33 Mississippi school districts a grace period of three months, until Dec. 1, to adopt a HEW-drawn plan for desegregation. Actual integration would have been delayed even further...
Together, Leonard and Satterfield were fighting suits brought by the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense Fund, which asked the court to order immediate desegregation of school districts in Mississippi. Citing 15 years of evasion by the state, Defense Fund Attorney Jack Greenberg argued in his brief that such an edict was necessary "so that protracted litigation loses its attractiveness as a tactic for delaying desegregation." By contrast, Leonard urged the Justices to affirm a lower-court order that gives the school boards until Dec. 1 to submit new desegregation plans-but sets no deadline for implementation. "Disestablishment of a dual school system...
...campaign. Speaking for many critics, a former lawyer in Leonard's division says: "He was made to understand that he should enforce civil rights laws, but only in a manner consistent with the Administration's political goals." When 65 lawyers in his division protested the delay in Mississippi desegregation last month, Leonard handled the revolt like a loyal party man. Once a decision is made in the department, he said at a news conference, the lawyers are obliged to carry it out. He fired the leader of the rebels, Gary Greenberg, who had refused to compromise his views...
Attorney General John Mitchell gave Leonard the dubious honor of arguing the Mississippi case before the Supreme Court even though the Solicitor General usually speaks for the U.S. It has been no easy job. In a friend of the court brief a respected group called the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law attacked Leonard's assertion that the division lacked "bodies and people" to enforce desegregation throughout the South this year. The committee, which includes former Justice Department Official John Doar (a Republican who headed Leonard's division with distinction under President Kennedy), promised to enlist...
...Supreme Court may well rule on the Mississippi cases this week, and it is unlikely to show much patience with delays in desegregation; in recent years, it has repeatedly declared that the time for "deliberate speed" is over. Even so, the justices confront a hard choice. They may conclude that a desegregation decision in the middle of a school year would produce widespread disorder in Mississippi-and would risk a collision between the Court and the Nixon Administration...