Nixon's Civil Rights: Politics, Principle, and Policy

by Dean J. Kotlowski

Overview

Richard Nixon believed that history would show his administration in the forefront of civil rights progress. What does the record really say about civil rights under Nixon? In a groundbreaking new book, Dean Kotlowski offers a surprising study of an administration that redirected the course of civil rights in America.

Nixon's policymaking recast the civil rights debate from an argument over racial integration to an effort to improve the economic station of disadvantaged groups. Kotlowski examines such issues as school desegregation, fair housing, voting rights, affirmative action, and minority businesses as well as Native American and women's rights. He details Nixon's role, revealing a president who favored deeds over rhetoric and who constantly weighed political expediency and principles in crafting civil rights policy.

In moving the debate from the street to the system, Nixon set civil rights on a path whose merits and results are still debated. Nixon's Civil Rights is a revealing portrait of one of the most enigmatic figures of modern American politics and a major contribution to the study of civil rights in America.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674006232
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	01/15/2002
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Dean J. Kotlowski is Professor of History at Salisbury University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Contents

Prologue: Deeds versus Words

1 Flexible Response: Southern Politics and School Desegregation

2 Open Communities versus Forced Integration: Romney, Nixon, and Fair Housing

3 The Art of Compromise: Extending the Voting Rights Act

4 Jobs Are Nixon's Rights Program: The Philadelphia Plan and Affirmative Action

5 Black Power, Nixon Style: Minority Businesses and Black Colleges

6 A Cold War: Nixon and Civil Rights Leaders

7 Challenges and Opportunities: Native American Policy

8 Stops and Starts: Women's Rights

Epilogue: In the Shadow of Nixon

Notes

Select Bibliography

Index

What People are Saying About This

This book surpasses anything previously published on Nixon's civil rights in terms of research, including interviews with participants, and interpretation. The segment dealing with women's civil rights provides more details than any other work to date. Other aspects are equally well researched and controversial, particularly Kotlowski's analysis of Nixon's much publicized 'southern strategy.' He shows how limited in scope and short-lived this strategy actually was. His handling of Nixon's successful desegregation of southern schools, the president's approach to implementing civil rights in general, and his first two unsuccessful Supreme Court appointments is insightful and enlightening.

Douglas Brinkley

Nixon's Civil Rights is, far and away, the best book written on the topic. It is contemporary history at its absolute finest: exhaustive research, clear prose, trenchant analysis, and shrewd judgments. Anyone interested in the Civil Rights Movement, the 1970s, and the Nixon era will find this book indispensable. A truly landmark study.
— Douglas Brinkley, University of New Orleans

Joan Hoff

This book surpasses anything previously published on Nixon's civil rights in terms of research, including interviews with participants, and interpretation. The segment dealing with women's civil rights provides more details than any other work to date. Other aspects are equally well researched and controversial, particularly Kotlowski's analysis of Nixon's much publicized 'southern strategy.' He shows how limited in scope and short-lived this strategy actually was. His handling of Nixon's successful desegregation of southern schools, the president's approach to implementing civil rights in general, and his first two unsuccessful Supreme Court appointments is insightful and enlightening.
— Joan Hoff, Ohio University

Editorial Reviews

Nixon's Civil Rights is, far and away, the best book written on the topic. It is contemporary history at its absolute finest: exhaustive research, clear prose, trenchant analysis, and shrewd judgments. Anyone interested in the Civil Rights Movement, the 1970s, and the Nixon era will find this book indispensable. A truly landmark study.

Douglas Brinkley

This book surpasses anything previously published on Nixon's civil rights in terms of research, including interviews with participants, and interpretation. The segment dealing with women's civil rights provides more details than any other work to date. Other aspects are equally well researched and controversial, particularly Kotlowski's analysis of Nixon's much publicized 'southern strategy.' He shows how limited in scope and short-lived this strategy actually was. His handling of Nixon's successful desegregation of southern schools, the president's approach to implementing civil rights in general, and his first two unsuccessful Supreme Court appointments is insightful and enlightening.

Joan Hoff

Scholars of the Nixon presidency and of the civil rights movement have generally overlooked the Nixon administration's civil rights policies. Kotlowski's book fills this void...The book shows how Nixon moved the civil rights debate from integration to economic opportunity, from rhetoric to action, and expanded the civil rights issue to women and Native Americans, while also helping to establish the Republican Party's "southern strategy". Well-researched and persuasively argued, the book captures the intriguing if frustrating complexity that characterizes Richard Nixon and will appeal equally to Nixon lovers, loathers, and those undecided. Strongly recommended.

Choice - S. C. Matheson

Scholars of the Nixon presidency and of the civil rights movement have generally overlooked the Nixon administration's civil rights policies. Kotlowski's book fills this void...The book shows how Nixon moved the civil rights debate from integration to economic opportunity, from rhetoric to action, and expanded the civil rights issue to women and Native Americans, while also helping to establish the Republican Party's "southern strategy". Well-researched and persuasively argued, the book captures the intriguing if frustrating complexity that characterizes Richard Nixon and will appeal equally to Nixon lovers, loathers, and those undecided. Strongly recommended.
— S. C. Matheson

Choice

A capable dissection of the Nixon administration's policies on such matters as affirmative action and housing integration, charting failures and successes alike. According to Richard Nixon, writes Kotlowski (History/Salisbury State Univ.), "once blacks became educated and entered skilled trades or professions or opened businesses, they would be able to purchase homes in suburbs." The president's thinking on matters of civil rights was seldom more complex than that, and he was motivated more by political expediency than a concern for social justice. Even so, as Kotlowski demonstrates, and even against the opposition of close advisors such as Charles Colson ("a bigot and crass opportunist"), Nixon's lieutenants managed to push through meaningful reforms in civil rights legislation and federal policy, most notably an aggressive program of affirmative action that ignited a firestorm of controversy. Kotlowski leaves little doubt that Nixon was in his heart a racist, but his pragmatic approach to politics and professional survival drove him to set aside his own inclinations, stand up to the Republican Party's archconservative Southern wing, and endorse reform. In taking such actions as increasing funds for the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, Kotlowski wryly observes, "Nixon's motives were not entirely high-minded, since he saw hiking the budget as a way to improve his ‘image' with minorities and liberals." But whatever the motivation, the author insists, Nixon's policies "helped minorities enter the middle class" and broadened federal concern to include other minorities such as Mexican Americans and Native Americans. Though these policies failed in other realms, checkered success,Kotlowski suggests, is better than no success at all; as civil rights activist Roger Wilkins observes in the closing pages, "looked at through the prism of the Reagan Administration, the Nixon civil rights record does not look as bad today as it did in 1971, '72, and '73." Of considerable interest to students of contemporary history, race relations, and federal policy.

Kirkus Reviews