Word: whitten
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...Whitten's role as leader of the group came as no surprise. A conservative and long-time opponent of federal civil rights bills, Whitten had fought to trim every appropriation bill this year (except one providing for increasing Interstate Highway construction, much of it, coincidentally, in the South...
...right among the home voters, have lost much of their ardor for further federal civil rights legislation. Those guiding welfare bills through the House watched helplessly as the inevitable budget cuts took alarmingly large chunks out of their appropriations. Then, in June, the bomb fell. Guided by Congressman Jamie Whitten of Mississippi, the House came within inches of saddling an $18 billion HEW bill with a rider that threatened to return school desegregation efforts to the medieval...
When the HEW bill came to the House, Whitten led more than his usual constituency of Southern Democrats. Pulling Northerners guarding against the Wallace threat into his alliance, Whitten rammed the rider through. None of the money voted in the bill, Whitten's amendment said, could be used or withheld to make local school districts integrate their schools...
...Jamie Whitten knew that too. He phrased the idea differently, but the thought seemed the same: "We think the little children should be able to stay at their schools," he said, "while all this is being fought in the courts...
Ironically, the fate of the desegregation efforts rested with Richard Nixon. House Republicans had cautiously straddled the issues during the Whitten debate, with Gerald Ford curiously silent about the GOP opposition philosophy. What Ford and his followers were waiting for was an official pronouncement from Nixon...