Nixon’s nuance was just the ticket in Greensboro

“In Greensboro, North Carolina, Nixon told his audience that he had a unique understanding of their difficult problem, meaning the race issue, because of the three years he had spent in their midst at Duke University Law School. He talked little about civil rights but spoke extensively about the Democrats’ threats to use federal authority to enforce civil rights. Then he connected that to state education: ‘But let us never forget that…  one of the essences of freedom in this county is local and state control of the educational system….’

“That was enough to satisfy any white Southerner in 1960 that Nixon and the Republicans would keep their hands off segregation.”

— From “The First Modern Campaign: Kennedy, Nixon and the election of 1960” by Gary Donaldson (2007)

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