Among other things, the civil rights bill created some new Government jobs among them the directorship of the Federal Community Relations Service, which will offer Southern communities help in ironing out their integration problems.
Who should the director be? Ideally, he ought to be someone acceptable to the South with a good record on integration. Such men are hard to find, and President Johnson was perplexed. Then Commerce Secretary Luther Hodges, an ex-Governor of North Carolina, suggested LeRoy Collins, 55, an ex-Governor of Florida. During six years in office (1955-60) in Tallahassee, his native city, Collins had talked a fair-to-middlin' civil rights...
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