Ain't Nobody Gonna Touch King Claude

In his three years as Governor of Florida, rambunctious Republican Claude Kirk Jr. has made an antic art of what he calls "confrontation politics." Kirk frankly describes himself as a "tree-shakin' son of a bitch," and he has proved it repeatedly in headline-grabbing performances that range from the 1967 Jacksonville rally, at which he faced down Black Nationalist Rap Brown, to his performance last January on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court, where he appeared waving a petition against recent desegregation rulings.

Last week Kirk put on his most spectacular tree-shaking performance ever. Within six furious days, the Governor 1) "overturned" a court decision on school busing by unilaterally declaring it "a horrible illegal act," 2) twice dismissed the duly elected school board of sleepy Manatee County on Florida's Gulf Coast, 3) ignored federal court orders to answer contempt charges, 4) ordered his men to resist federal marshals "with force," 5) installed himself as Manatee school superintendent, and 6) made a direct and lofty appeal for justice to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Governor's Club. The cause of Kirk's Samsonian ire was the Supreme Court's January order directing "immediate" desegregation in a number of school districts in Florida and four other Southern states. Although he is almost a liberal (by Florida standards) on racial matters, Kirk also knows an issue when he sees one. His voluble but futile protests had been doing wonders for his local political standing, which had sunk to a low ebb after his bumbling attempt to win the 1968 G.O.P. vice-presidential nomination and disclosures that much of Kirk's high living was bankrolled by contributions to his "Governor's Club." Last week, when Manatee school officials prepared to increase busing among the county's 17,000 students in order to meet a federal judge's April 6 deadline for improving the racial balance in elementary and junior high schools, Kirk decided to make good on his threat to suspend state school boards that complied with federal busing orders. Taking the law into his own hands, he imperiously declared that "forced busing is illegal in Florida."

In his DC-3, Kirk flew from Tallahassee to Bradenton, where he and a handful of aides set themselves up in the two-story brick school headquarters as Manatee's new board of education --not just for the day, but for "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow."

After the Governor failed to show up in court to answer possible contempt charges, Federal Judge Ben Krentzman fired Superintendent Kirk, reinstalled the local school board and reaffirmed his busing order. Kirk thereupon fired the local school board all over again, and sent a team of aides to take over the Bradenton school headquarters. The U.S. Attorney in Tampa responded by dispatching an assistant and three federal marshals to Bradenton. When they reached the school headquarters, they were met by a local sheriff and six deputies. After several tense moments of badge-to-badge confrontation, Kirk's aides locked themselves in an empty office. A dozen state troopers arrived to back up the deputies, and the Feds retreated to a local Howard Johnson restaurant, where they lamely claimed to have technically "arrested" Kirk's men.

Outraged that anyone would dare arrest his minions, Kirk decided to return to Bradenton--but not before giving an impromptu press conference in a corridor of the Tallahassee Memorial Hospital, where his German-born second wife Erika was giving birth to a son, their second child. Defending his stand, Kirk demanded "my day in court"--but not just any court. "I want to be in the Supreme Court on Friday or Saturday or Monday to get law on the subject of busing," he said. Alluding to President Nixon's recent speech recommending local options in carrying out desegregation (TIME, April 6), he declared that "the President of the United States is against forced busing and I'm against forced busing." As for the marshals, Kirk jeered: "Ain't nobody gonna lay a hand on Claude Jr. Anybody who lays a glove on a sovereign is committing an illegal act. There is nobody who can bodily force the head of a sovereign state into court."

His harangue ended, King Claude flew back to Bradenton, where he arrived at the administration building at 4:30 p.m. in the triumphant company of 70 Florida lawmen. He repeated his demand for a Supreme Court hearing, warning this time that the situation threatened "grave danger of loss of life." Later, marshals were allowed to enter the building to serve subpoenas on nine of his men. A few hours after that performance, Kirk, his aides, his troopers and his plainclothesmen all deserted the place and there was little likelihood that they would be coming back. Fed up with the Governor's grandstanding, Judge Krentzman formally cited Kirk for contempt and told him to get out of the way of the busing plan or face fines of $10,000 a day.

Open Season. As Kirk's wild week came to a close, even many Floridians who agreed with his stand on busing wondered about the rationality of his tactics. Observing that "megalomania has no place in a statehouse," the Miami Herald called for the Governor to be "removed from office as unfit to serve."

By his own lights, of course, Kirk was shrewdly playing on the ambiguities in the Administration's policy on desegregation. In defying the courts, he claimed to be acting in the spirit of Nixon's March 24 statement--and who was to say he was not? Health, Education and Welfare Secretary Robert Finch last week sought to "clarify" the President's position by insisting that there would be "no backward motion" in integration, and he predicted that the number of black students in classes with whites (now 1,200,000) would double next fall. Yet even as Finch spoke, the Department of Justice filed a "friend-of-the-court" brief in a North Carolina desegregation case, suggesting that a federal judge had committed "an abuse of discretion" in ordering busing to achieve desegregation in Charlotte and Mecklenberg County. That kind of undercutting of the federal courts could make it open season for would-be tree shakers all over the South.

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