How a Stacked Supreme Court Killed School Desegregation

The Washington Post published an opinion piece the other day by Michelle Adams, who has published a new book on the segregation-friendly role played by the 5-4 decision of the Supreme Court 50 years ago in Milliken v. Bradley. 

Even as we consider today the role that presidents play in shaping American social policy (see Trump's role in killing Roe v. Wade), I am eager to read the Adams book and find out how Professor Adams portrayed the role of another racist president, Richard Nixon, in crushing school desegregation.   

Nixon's role was crucial, as demonstrated by Gerald Grant's research from the early 2000s.  In 2010, I reviewed Grant's book, Hope and Despair in the American City: Why There Are No Bad Schools in Raleigh.

Below is the relevant section of that essay review that reminds us again of the power of the American Presidency to shape American life:

We should never underestimate the power of the presidents. Grant’s book should be required reading for present and potential school board members, as well as for any history or policy course on American education, if for no other reason than the recounting of how Nixon and his White House cabal of Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Mitchell instituted a segregationist and anti-busing litmus test for any judge to be considered for appointment to the Federal bench, including the U. S. Supreme Court. 

For Nixon and his aides, their litmus test would be applied, of course, before any potential judge ever faced the lights of a Senate confirmation hearing. To get to the hearing, in fact, potential judges had to be on the side of segregated schools and segregated public housing. Grant shares transcripts from the Nixon’s White House taping system to show Nixon's active complicity in killing busing within or across districts for the purpose of school integration:

Nixon was making sure the he would not have to ask any nominee about his stand on busing, while directing Mitchell and key aides to apply that test to any potential appointment they brought to the president's desk. Because of the possible retirement of a second justice, Mitchell suggested to Nixon that he might make a "double play."

Nixon: Well, even then I don'twant a liberal.

Mitchell: Oh no, no.Nixon: I don't want a liberal.

Mitchell: Absolutely not.

Nixon: I just feel so strongly about that, I mean, when I think what the busing decisions have done to the South, and what it could do with de facto busing [in the North]. 

Mitchell: I agree.

Before Mitchell left the White House that day, Nixon underlined his instructions once again: 

I want you to have a specific talk with whatever man you consider. And I have to have an absolute commitment from him on busing and integration. I really have to. Go out and tell 'em that we totally respect his right to do otherwise, but if he believes otherwise, I don't want to appoint him to the Court.

Nixon got the Court he wanted. The four justices he appointed—replacing liberal judges of the Warren Court, including Chief Justice Earl Warren himself, along with Abe Fortas, Hugo Black, and John Marshall Harlan—radically changed the direction of the U. S. Supreme Court and provided the majority to stop desegregation at the city line in the North. The Warren Court had ordered desegregation of city and suburbs in Charlotte in 1968, but Nixon's Court refused to do so in 1974 in Detroit with its majority decision [in Milliken v. Bradley] (pp. 151-152).

The 5-4 decision to strike down Detroit's inter-district desegregation plan helped to seal the fate of urban desegregation efforts nationwide, while demonstrating a willingness by the new Nixon Court majority to flex its judicial muscle for the cause of segregation. By the middle of the next decade, the traceable resegregation of American schools had begun in earnest, and for the past twenty years [now fifty], that pace has only quickened.