(C) Common Dreams
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Southern Strategy [1]
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Date: 2023-02
On August 14, 1970, Richard Nixon treated New Orleans, a city keen on parades, to a campaign-style motorcade. With Nixon standing and waving through the sunroof, his limousine moved slowly down wide Canal Street, then through narrow Chartres Street. Thousands of people lined the sidewalks to cheer and be near the President of the United States.
A photograph taken that day sits on a bookcase in my home office. The picture shows Nixon just outside the French Quarter hotel then known as the Royal Orleans. At the edge of the frame, there I am, standing on the sidewalk, hands in pants pockets, tan sport coat open. My assignment was to capture the sights, sounds, and “scene’’ of a presidential visit for the New Orleans States-Item, an afternoon newspaper, while more senior reporters covered the serious business of Nixon’s trip into the American South.
That business had to do with school desegregation. By court order, the period of “all deliberate speed,” as provided in the Brown ruling, was ending, and laggard southern districts had to desegregate when schools opened for the 1970–71 term. Nixon, who had served as vice president when President Dwight Eisenhower sent troops into Little Rock in 1957, met in New Orleans with the co-chairs of seven state advisory committees to tell them he wanted a peaceful opening of public schools.
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[1] Url:
https://www.southerncultures.org/article/southern-strategy-from-nixon-to-trump/
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