Home / Full timeline / President Ronald Reagan appoints Clarence Pendleton, Jr., a fifty-year-old Black Californian, as the chairman of the United States Commission on Civil Rights (CCR).
President Ronald Reagan appoints Clarence Pendleton, Jr., a fifty-year-old Black Californian, as the chairman of the United States Commission on Civil Rights (CCR).
1981 (Nov 16)
President Ronald Reagan fired Arthur S. Flemming, the seventy-six-year-old chairman of the United States Commission on Civil Rights (CCR). Sources told United Press International (UPI) that the White House was "angered by the Commission's and Flemming's strong advocacy of affirmative action, voting rights, and . . . busing to achieve school desegregation." This was the first time in the twenty-four-year history of the commission that "an incoming administration [had] changed [the CCR's] membership, a restraint underlining a bipartisan commitment to civil rights." Flemming, a former secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) in the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, was appointed to the commission in 1974 by President Richard M. Nixon. He had recently said that the Reagan administration's views on school desegregation were "in conflict with the Constitution." Reagan appointed Clarence Pendleton, Jr., a fifty-year-old Black Californian, to replace Flemming as chairman of the CCR. Pendleton, considered a conservative Republican, had supported Reagan in the 1980 elections. He had previously been chairman of the San Diego Transit Corporation and head of the San Diego Urban League. Pendleton became the first Black chairman of the Civil Rights Commission.
References:
- • Hornsby, Alton. Chronology of African-American History: Significant Events and People from 1619 to the Present. Detroit: Gale Research, 1995.