Pat Buchanan, New York Times bestselling author and former staff assistant to Nixon, writes for Townhall about the stigma associated with President Nixon and his so-called “Southern strategy,” having allegedly used racial politics to steal the South from the Democrats who claimed to be the heroes of Civil Rights.
On the contrary, Buchanan writes:
In Nixon’s presidency, the civil rights enforcement budget rose 800 percent. Record numbers of blacks were appointed to federal office. An Office of Minority Business Enterprise was created. SBA loans to minorities soared 1,000 percent. Aid to black colleges doubled.
Nixon won the South not because he agreed with them on civil rights — he never did — but because he shared the patriotic values of the South and its antipathy to liberal hypocrisy.
When Johnson left office, 10 percent of Southern schools were desegregated. When Nixon left, the figure was 70 percent.
Richard Nixon desegregated the Southern schools, something you won’t learn in today’s public schools.
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Buchanan will be discussing his new book, THE GREATEST COMEBACK: How Richard Nixon Rose from Defeat to Create the New Majority, at the Nixon Library on July 21, 2014 at 7:00 PM. Click here for tickets and a signed copy of his new book.