Richard Nixon and Martin Luther King and the President’s Committee on Government Contracts

Grand Old Partisan celebrates more than seventeen decades of Republican heroes and heroics. Today, I praise Republican opposition to racial discrimination. May 11th 1959, Richard Nixon chaired a meeting of the President’s Committee on Government Contracts. This interagency body had been established by Dwight Eisenhower "for improving and making more effective the nondiscrimination provisions of government contracts." Four hundred religious leaders gathered at a prominent hotel in Washington, DC.

At the Vice President’s invitation, Martin Luther King delivered the opening address:

"The problem we are dealing with is part of a worldwide problem of man’s failure to apply Judeo-Christian ethics to his every day life. We need not look very far to see the injurious effect that discrimination in employment has upon the psychological and moral life of the victims. To deny any group honest work and fair pay is not only immoral, it is almost murderous."Since the Church is the guardian of the morals of the community, it cannot look with indifference upon this pressing problem."

"I cannot close without stressing the responsibility laid upon leaders of minority groups to stimulate their youth to prepare themselves for better jobs. Doors are opening now that were not opened in the past, and the great challenge facing minority groups is to be ready to enter these doors as they open. No greater tragedy can befall minority groups at this hour than to allow new opportunities to emerge, without the concomitant preparedness and readiness to meet them."

The civil rights leader concluded with a vision of emerging "from the bleak and desolate midnight of man’s inhumanity to man into the bright and glowing daybreak of freedom and justice for all of God’s children."

Nixon thanked King for attending, stressing the importance of "equal opportunity for employment and training for all groups."

Back to Basics for the Republican Party is my civil rights history of the GOP. To quote the book: "The more we Republicans know about the history of our party, the more Democrats will worry about the future of theirs. For more information, see www.grandoldpartisan.com. 

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Michael Zak is author of Back to Basics for the Republican Party, a history of GOP civil rights achievement. 

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