King Holiday Likely to Delay Quota Decision

Against a backdrop of maneuvering among top officials to soften federal minority hiring quotas, President Reagan launched a week of activities focused on black Americans to coincide with the celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday.

Reagan met Tuesday with 25 members of the Council for a Black Economic Agenda, a group created last year that favors community-based, self-help efforts to solve minority problems.

Although the President initially opposed congressional attempts to make the slain civil rights leader’s birthday a national holiday, he will honor the day Wednesday with a speech at an inner-city elementary school in Washington that bears King’s name.

Visit by Mrs. King

He also will greet King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, at the White House on Friday. Mrs. King has carried on her husband’s activities as a civil rights activist since his assassination in 1968. On Thursday, he will present a congressional gold medal to the widow of Roy Wilkins, who headed the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People.

White House officials said it is highly unlikely that the Administration would choose a week so laden with civil-rights overtones to announce its new policy on hiring quotas for contractors that conduct business with the federal government.

“I don’t think anything is going to pop on that,” said one spokesman, confirming that the issue is still being hotly debated and that no formal recommendations have yet been sent to Reagan.

The sharpest differences are between Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III, who would like to abolish federal hiring quotas outright, and Labor Secretary William E. Brock III, who believes that they may have outlived their usefulness, in some cases, but remain an important symbol.

Shock Waves of Reaction

Although Reagan has sided with Meese in the past, taking the conservative position that any type of quotas are unfair, a White House official said he understands the shock waves such an action would send throughout the civil rights community.

White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan is expected to meet with Meese and Brock within two weeks in an attempt to resolve the issue.

One possible outcome, according to Administration officials, is a tricky compromise that would not abolish the executive order requiring minority quotas for federal contractors, as Meese had originally wanted, but that would demote it to a largely symbolic document.

In its place, the Administration would issue a new executive order calling for voluntary “goals,” language Reagan has always preferred over quotas.

Symbolic Weapon

Under this proposed compromise, federal contractors would not be required legally to meet quotas, but Brock could cite the language of the original executive order as a symbolic weapon in getting contractors to hire fairly.

In a news conference after the black council’s half-hour meeting with Reagan, chairman Robert L. Woodson said that members had presented several “priority” proposals for black economic recovery in tax reform, tax credits for businesses in distressed areas, education vouchers and a “family-to-family nationwide network” that would encourage self-help.

Reagan already has endorsed many of these proposals, including tuition tax credits and legislation creating inner-city “enterprise zones,” but he has been unable to muster sufficient congressional support for their passage.

Woodson said that Reagan did not offer his group anything more specific than his support “in principle.” However, a White House briefing paper circulated among staff aides noted that council members “tend to share” the Administration’s view that “new, post-civil rights measures” are needed “rather than federal aid.”

Council Criticized

Although national black organizations have criticized the council for supporting Administration policies that aim at cutting social programs, Woodson remained adamant that federal aid is not the answer.

“We have lost confidence in our own ability to help ourselves,” he said, calling upon churches, neighborhoods and families to fill the void.

Echoing Reagan’s familiar anti-government rhetoric, he said: “For every problem, there’s a program, and for every program, there’s a bureaucracy. And that’s not the solution to these problems.”

Times Staff Writer Lou Fintor also contributed to this report.