Time Runs Out in Mississippi

The words were couched in a soft Southern drawl, but the message was sharp and hard as steel: "When we say you have to get started, that is what we mean--tomorrow." Thus did Federal Judge Griffin B. Bell, in a conference with school officials last week, lay to rest a decades-old system of racial segregation in 30 Mississippi school districts. By Dec. 31, 26 of the districts will have to have completed reassignment of students and faculty of both races, put new school-bus routes in operation and taken all other necessary steps to end segregation. The four others have until September.

The order, which set guidelines for carrying out the Supreme Court directive of the week before, was issued by Bell, a Georgian, and two fellow Southerners on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. It made it clear that the time for litigation had run out and promised a period of painful readjustment in the Mississippi schools. It also constituted a major rebuke for the Nixon Administration's kid-glove policy toward segregation. "You can complain and feel bad," Bell told local school officials, "but there's nothing you can do about it."

The court ordered the districts to desegregate according to the plans drawn up last summer by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. The plans assign students to schools under a variety of systems, without regard to race. The court will maintain its jurisdiction over the districts, and no changes in the plans will be allowed until at least next September. Bell also encouraged school-board integration, stating that the court would be more sympathetic to changes requested by bi-racial groups than by white-controlled school boards alone.

Southern Strategy. The court's order brushed aside a Justice Department request to allow school boards time to draw up their own plans. The request, prepared by Jerris Leonard, chief of the Civil Rights Division, made it plain that the Administration does not plan to abandon its passive role in the desegregation fight, a role that, as part of the President's "Southern strategy," is calculated to build the Republican Party in Dixie. There was nothing in Leonard's proposal to suggest a firm determination to enforce the law. On the contrary, it could be construed as an invitation to Southerners to delay carrying out total desegregation as long as possible.

Attorney General John Mitchell, Leonard's boss and Nixon's chief political adviser, denies that he is pursuing a Southern strategy. Last week he maintained that a gradual, conciliatory approach was the only way to desegregate the schools without provoking an uproar that would be damaging to education. Mitchell and HEW Secretary Robert Finch said that they feared that the Supreme Court's "cold-turkey" approach would accelerate the exodus of whites to proliferating private schools, eroding taxpayer support for the public schools and thereby undermining the education given to the blacks and poor whites who remain (see EDUCATION). Obviously, Politician Mitchell, who has pledged to enforce the law fully, also shudders at the prospect of having to order federal marshals or troops in Mississippi to repress disorders by potential Republican voters.

Invitation to Resistance. The upheaval that Mitchell fears is encouraged by the Administration's attitude. Leonard's disingenuous remark several weeks ago that he would not have enough "bodies" to enforce desegregation encourages resistance, according to Gary Greenberg. Greenberg had been senior trial lawyer in the Civil Rights Division until Leonard fired him for protesting the slowdown in desegregation. He said: "The invitation to reopen the era of massive resistance is inherent in such an attitude. It makes it infinitely more difficult to bring about obedience to the law."

Violence is not expected in Mississippi, however, no thanks to the Administration. What the Administration approach fails to recognize is the ability of most white Southerners to adjust, once they find desegregation inevitable. A.F. Summer, Mississippi's attorney general, faced up to that last week, saying that he was confident that Mississippians would expend the vast effort needed "to keep quality education going in our state." But, he added, "a lot of people will have their lives changed."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.