Nixon, Klein & Scott on Minority appointments

Transcript (AI-generated)

This transcript is incomplete. The transcription skipped stretches of speech — roughly 2 minutes of this recording (about 20% of it) is represented by only a few words. Listen to the audio rather than relying on the text below; a corrected transcript is queued.

This transcript was generated automatically by AI (WhisperX) and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Names and numbers are often wrong; speakers are not identified. Do not cite it as authoritative — verify against the audio and the finding aid.

Download transcript (.txt) · JSON data

All right.

President, right now, I'm just a panelist.

How are you?

Good to see you.

I was thinking, sir, we'll come here together.

We're here in front of the White House, sir.

Thank you.

All right.

I'm here.

Yeah, we're doing a lot of things like you're going through, which is fantastic.

Congratulations.

Well, I want to tell you that we are very happy to be here tonight.

And you will be a great addition.

You can talk to the authority among people that don't even trust you.

Her, of course, will be here.

mentor, and I've got many friends in the organization.

We all know that we've got problems in the black community that have nothing to do with black, and quite a necessity with the fact that you've got an awful lot of poor people.

And with the democratic tradition.

On the other hand, all we want is a fair shake, and particularly in the field, you know, we've been making some rather remarkable corrections in these appointments.

You know, deciding, pushing that military thing, you know, I put a judge in the military court of appeals, that's a big one.

You know, there's never been a way to find another.

And it should be.

But you figure the number of, you know, people, like,

or any iron service, the proportions are so important that it should have been long ago.

And I have one of them.

I said, I don't think I've talked about it.

I think it's in Cleveland, Ohio.

I think it's Ohio.

Then we've got Johnny Johnson.

I don't believe that's announced here.

It hasn't been announced, but it's, I got hold of a couple of, at Brogan.

I don't know, months ago, I said, I don't want to name him here.

He'd been working on the off years as an ambassador over in Ferguson, over in Africa.

He just wanted to do it.

And so we kept going around.

That's a great position.

We're trying to make breakthroughs in areas.

See, what we've really got to get away from is, well, there's a black spot.

The moment you do that, then you're going to be fenced in in that.

We don't want to think of you as just working in a black publishing business.

It's very important that I'm on the interchange.

You go to that and put him in the other way.

Because I just don't believe in that sort of thing.

I want to naturally, naturally, people like Bob Brown and the White House staff can do a lot better job talking to some people who come in here who may have black interests in mind than somebody else.

But we try to mix in another niche, too, because if you ever get down to a pure sort of a traditional quarter system, or whatever the case may be,

Just certain spots.

But you need a breakthrough.

Same thing is true of women, like I do.

And it's a very different problem.

But I believe that women now, some people say, well, I don't have a woman in the Cabinet Office.

Well, we don't have them.

They don't have them to be in it at the moment.

But we do have a woman in the Consumer Affairs and the Freedoms Administration.

But more importantly, we have women as Chairman of Commissions.

Chairman of the Maritime Commission is one.

And Chairman of the Spectator Commission is another.

They never get a chance.

That's what we want to do in the case of lunch.

You see my point?

I want to find areas where we've got qualified people and don't put them in charge of just the civil rights area.

In fact, maybe that's not the best area.

In other words, put them in places where, like this military court of appeals, that isn't just a perfect, just, you know, it would be dealing mainly with white cases.

We're going to John Johnson's square in this afternoon.

In defense, that's another post of that kind.

Oh, John, yeah, our California.

Yes, sir.

Yeah, not John.

That's not of the.

Yeah, yeah, well, that's a decision.

That's what they're in defense.

In the men's heart.

It's another breakthrough.

And I think just a little quiet talk about that, though, that you know this administration and all this jazz to the effect that, well, we don't care, and the rest of this is nonsense.

Now, you do get some problems when you get the Black Congress and Congress and the rest of the state.

Why didn't we do all those things?

Well, you've got so much money.

but they also look at what we are doing.

We are moving in every area just as well as we can and we are trying to be absolutely fair.

The main thing is the attitude as far as we're concerned.

We, as somebody said, we're color blind here.

We really are.

We want you to feel very much at home in our shop.

We want you to feel the herb well with herb and we'll find it around here.

I hope good luck.

Good team.

Yes, sir.

All right.

Well, we've got to get to the partners.

Oh, we don't have them.

We'll bring them right in here.

I see.

Let me see.

I'll give you a little time.

Thank you.

How's that?

Oh, thank you, Erickson.

That's the little one.

Do you have three kids?

Yes, sir.

Boys or girls?

Two boys and one girl.

I'll give you the work site.

I'll take it.

I'll take it for the boys.

These are better.

And for the little girl.

Thank you.

We should have given you a bag.

Those little things could have arrested me and said, buddy, you have fun.

Get in my bed down here.

We'll do this.

And now you've got a tough pack.

Is there a tough hide that you're going to find that's not going to be popular out here?

And the bar is crazy terrible.

And so you tell it out the other way and so forth.

You're just going to stand up there like, oh, Art, talk to him.

I'm just trying to say, am I afraid of the challenge?

Right.

Well, Art, you know, he gets around here.

He loves to fight.

I don't want you to have to be fighting.

But I just want you to know that I'm going to be easy.

Right, sir.

Okay.

Thank you.

He's been around since 1929.

I don't think he has quite as distinguished a character.

Nixon, Klein & Scott on Minority appointments

AI Summary

Audio

Transcript (AI-generated)

NARA Description

Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on June 16, 1971

Cite this conversation