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• 1 2013-08-15T18:45:53-07:00 A New Southern Strategy 10 plain 2015-08-29T12:32:20-07:00 School segregation in Florida long preceded Claude Kirk’s election in 1966. Ten years after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education (1954) ruling against 'separate but equal' schools, less than 3 percent of Florida’s black students attended integrated schools. In Manatee County, which became the focus of the busing standoff, only 170 of 3,900 black students attended integrated schools in 1965. Like many Southern school districts, the Manatee County school board implemented only token desegregation throughout the 1960s, with their attorneys fending off regular legal challenges from the NAACP. Manatee County ran out of legal options after Green v. County School Board (1968), where the U.S. Supreme Court found 'freedom of choice' plans like those in Manatee to be insufficient tools for desegregation, and Alexander v. Holmes (1969), which denied further delays in southern desegregation and replaced 'all deliberate speed' with a new standard that the 'obligation of every school district is to terminate dual school systems at once and to operate now and hereafter only unitary schools.' The Supreme Court, overturning the Fifth Circuit court and refusing a requested delay from the Justice Department, set the 'at once' deadline for Florida and five other Southern States as February 1, 1970.
  
  Kirk joined southern politicians like Strom Thurmond, Lester Maddox and George Wallace in attacking this desegregation deadline, but he received the majority of the media attention. Kirk travelled to Washington D.C. twice in late January 1970, each time appearing at the Supreme Court and on ABC and CBS newscasts. In their reports on Kirk’s first visit, where he hand-delivered a request for a delay in the desegregation order, both stations quoted the governor’s statement that it would be 'financial and physically impossible' for Florida to meet the deadline. ABC’s Stephen Geer noted that Kirk came to the Supreme Court to 'dramatize his extraordinary action.' Kirk returned to the Supreme Court four days later, to ask the court to declare that all school systems be held to the same school desegregation standards. 'The February 1 deadline will cause forced busing, which is unconstitutional, which is against the Civil Rights Act, which would cause fiscal irresponsibility, and therefore I will stand against forced busing now and in the future,' Kirk told the reporters and camera crews gathered outside of the high court. Kirk promised to go to jail to stop busing if necessary. 'I would feel I am going to jail for a philosophical cause,' he argued, 'just as our prisoners in Vietnam are in jail for a philosophical cause.' CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite described Kirk’s plea for a uniform national policy as part of a 'new southern school strategy.' Indeed, Kirk was not alone in calling for the North and South to be treated alike with respect to school desegregation policy. On the same day that Kirk made his second appearance at the Supreme Court, the attorneys general of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama announced plans to intervene as friends of the court in the Pasadena, California school desegregation case, with the stated goal of making sure than the same desegregation rules applied to Pasadena as to the Southern states. The next month, U.S. Senator John Stennis of Mississippi introduced an amendment to a federal education bill calling for common desegregation policies in both the North and South. Stennis’ motivation, historian Joseph Crespino argues, 'was the hope that accelerated desegregation in the North would spark a broader, national backlash against school desegregation.' While he did not comment publically on the Stennis amendment, Kirk’s call for a uniform policy regarding desegregation also worked to make busing an issue that resonated nationally, before busing orders actually impacted most cities. The important difference was that, as a governor, Kirk was closer to the front lines of the busing battle and in a better position to plead that he and his state were the victims of unfair judicial orders and federal policies. And unlike President Nixon, who sought to avoid flare-ups on the busing issue, Kirk was well positioned to benefit from such controversies. As Nixon told his advisors in February, 1970, “There is no mileage in doing the right thing here, there’s only mileage for demagogues. There’s mileage for anybody who wants to be Governor, no mileage for somebody who has to be President…Kirk down in Florida…can emphasize the negative…maybe its okay for a candidate, not a President.' Television news cameras were eager to broadcast Kirk’s regular acts of defiance, in the process establishing busing as a national issue and Kirk as a key voice in this debate.
• 1 2013-08-16T16:02:09-07:00 Claude Kirk's Televised Stand in the Schoolhouse Door 6 plain 2014-09-11T12:43:48-07:00
  While the Supreme Court declined to answer Kirk’s appeals for delay, federal judge Ben Krentzman extended the deadline for all but one of the Florida school districts under court order to September 1, 1970. The remaining school district, Manatee County, was given until April 1, 1970 to desegregate. Kirk issued an executive order announcing that the Manatee School Board and Superintendent would face suspension if they complied with the order, and he made good on this promise when he took over the school district in early April and directed students to ignore the integration plan. 
  The school takeover propelled Kirk back onto the nightly news broadcasts and the front pages of national newspapers. “Probably not since George Wallace made his stand in the school house doorway in Alabama in 1963,” ABC anchor Frank Reynolds noted, “has a state governor placed himself in such direct conflict with the federal government.” The following report showed Kirk speaking to reporters from the superintendent’s office, which he and his staff had occupied. “Were involved here in forced busing,” Kirk said. “Now that’s the clearest cut most violent circumstance in the nation’s and world’s history.” CBS broadcast a different part of the news conference, with Kirk arguing that “[Judge Krenzman] is in defiance of my constitutional rights as an individual and governor.” Television news reports framed Kirk’s school takeover as a conflict between Kirk and federal authority or between Kirk and “busing,” rather than about opposition to school integration as such. Referring to Kirk’s outsized role in the case, Judge Krenzman commented, “I have to keep reminding myself that Manatee schools are a party to this case.” Unlike the earlier southern school protests to which Kirk was frequently compared, there were no specific black students, like Elizabeth Eckford and the Little Rock Nine, Vivian Malone Jones and James Hood at the University of Alabama, or James Meredith at the University of Mississippi, whose rights seemed to be at stake in these reports. Manatee, therefore, received extended media coverage as a new southern integration crisis without Kirk being framed as a racist demagogue. 
  Kirk’s successful management of television news coverage was most clearly on display as the school showdown stretched into its fourth day, when federal marshals tried unsuccessfully to remove Kirk’s men from the school building, while Kirk answered reporters’ questions from the maternity ward of a Tallahassee hospital where his wife had recently given birth. ABC broadcast a tense exchange between Kirk and reporter Gregory Jackson. “Confrontation has been turned 180 degrees,” Kirk contended. “The Federal government is the violator and I am the man who asks for law. I am the man who asks for his day in court. I am the man who pleads for hearing of my grievance.” In response to Jackson’s question, “then why don’t you follow the federal law which ordered desegregation?” Kirk raised his voice and pointed his finger at Jackson: “Oh, You’re a fool. This is the number one compliance state in the nation…You can tell your broadcasters in New York that as soon as they comply as much as Florida has, as the number one state in the nation in compliance, that’s the whole difference.” Kirk’s contrast of Florida and New York reiterated his call for a uniform national policy on desegregation and the widespread feeling among southern politicians that New York and the North got a free pass on de facto segregation from federal officials. Less obviously, Kirk’s pointed reference to “your broadcasters in New York” echoed Spiro Agnew’s attack on television news’ geographical bias: “Of the men who produce and direct the network news, the nation knows practically nothing…We do know that to a man these commentators and producers live and work in the geographical and intellectual confines of Washington, D.C., or New York City, the latter of which James Reston terms the most unrepresentative community in the entire United States.” Here again, Kirk positioned himself as defending Florida from a barrage of unjust external powers. 
  If Kirk successfully turned this verbal exchange to his advantage, he also benefited from the less than optimal filming conditions offered by the maternity ward. The footage broadcast on both ABC and CBS is cramped and a bit chaotic. The ABC cameraperson struggles to keep track of Kirk, producing a mid-shot that floats to Kirk’s right and left and focuses for several seconds on his right arm and hand at his side. CBS’s footage, shot behind Kirk’s left shoulder, is even less clear, with Kirk in profile and the side of his face barely visible. What is clear in both clips is that media personnel surrounded Kirk in an untraditional and unfamiliar filming environment. While this footage lacked the “good” images television news producers usually preferred (e.g., clearly framed subjects, steady cameras, and appropriate lighting), Kirk had by this point established a national profile that made the scene newsworthy. The chaotic filming conditions and close proximity (off-camera) of his wife and newborn daughter also helped Kirk, who was six feet two inches tall and weighed over 200 pounds, seem less like a physically imposing bully than like someone whose personal and familial space was being violated by the news personnel. That busing opponents frequently invoked a parent’s right defend their children could not have been lost on Kirk or television viewers. With this televised maternity ward confrontation, Kirk made visible what millions of Americans felt was at stake in the battle over busing.