The Potomac Chronicle

From the Kennedy administration through the end of the Reagan era, the Potomac Institute gave vital, behind-the-scenes support to countless public-and-private-sector initiatives related to equal opportunity, urban social problems, and race relations. Part history and part memoir of Harold C. Fleming, the instituters"s leader,The Potomac Chronicletells for the first time how the institute served as a creative broker of talent, ideas, and resources among minorities, activists, and interest groups. Owing to Flemingrs"s dedication, coolheadedness, and low-key approach, no other such organization was as well linked to-and as trusted by-both government policymakers and southern civil rights leaders.In the context of major national trends and events,The Potomac Chronicletells of the instituters"s role in the Kennedy administrationrs"s civil rights policy debates, in helping the Defense Department set up what would become model guidelines for civil rights compliance by federal contractors, and in informing, educating, and reassuring Americans about Lyndon Johnsonrs"s Civil Rights Act. Other accomplishments discussed include the instituters"s involvement in forming the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, tying civil rights requirements to government programs and private practices in education, housing, and employment, and, in the years before it closed in 1988, helping defend affirmative action.