MCBC 8 page 16

 trend of the day, and he ruled from what he considered law. This is a country
 based on law, and I felt like he had a right to do that, and I felt like the governor,
 as long as he followed the proper procedure and protocol, had a right to stand
 against him. I certainly felt strongly, personally, against forced bussing. I felt like
 that would destroy the neighborhood-school concept. But, I have said before a
 lot of times, it was not my fight. It was the governor's fight. My only job was the
 follow what the governor wanted me to do as his chief of staff.

B: Did you feel that Governor Kirk did follow the proper protocol?

H: He had every right to suspend them if he thought there was a justifiable reason,
 misfeasance, malfeasance. He did that, and nobody attempted to override it.
 Like I said, one of the legislators-and I am sure all of them agreed because they
 did not try to override it-stood up and just preached his name to high heaven,
 and as soon as the governor gave up, why, he turned the other way, turned
 against him and attacked him for giving up.

B: That was Jerome Pratt?

H: Yes. So, I felt like the delegation was certainly supportive. I think they would
 have liked originally to have passed the program that was based on the Orange
 County [plan] that required no forced bussing that they thought would work and
 could get through the courts without that, I believe they called it, unitary system. I
 cannot remember exactly. Like I said, I was not an educational aide, and I did
 not follow all those particular plans. I had so much to do myself that I did not get
 into those. But when that died, like I said, with the nine-to-nine tie vote, then the
 court had ordered April 6 for the plan to go into action. Everybody did what they
 felt they could do to stop it.

B: How did you feel the legislature as a whole reacted to this situation?

H: Again, I felt like it was politics in action. The Democrats have certain ideas of
 their own, and Republicans had ideas of theirs. I have to believe that by and
 large, the legislature really did not favor forced bussing, but they were not going
 to do a whole lot to try to create any kind of thing that looked like we were
 fighting desegregation. I am sure if I had been a legislator, I would have been the
 same way. It was just the law of the land almost at that point, and trying to find a
 method to overturn what was the going way, I guess you would call it, you had to
 be kind of innovative. Claude Kirk chose an awful innovative way to try to fight it.
 It took a lot of guts for a governor to do that. I know everybody says he was
 flamboyant and all these other descriptive adjectives and he was one of those
 charge-over-the-hill Marine types, but it took a lot of courage to stand up and do
 that. Unfortunately or fortunately, whichever side you are on, a lot of politicians,
 or several of them, have tried it, and each one has come to a different fate.