To the Editor:
''How a Republican Desegregated the South's Schools,'' by George P. Shultz (Op-Ed, Jan. 8), rewrites history.
Throughout his presidency, Richard M. Nixon pursued a Southern strategy intended to play on white resentment and fear of Lyndon B. Johnson's civil rights agenda.
In 1977, when I became secretary of health, education and welfare, more than 80 percent of the staff of H.E.W.'s Office of Civil Rights, which was responsible for school desegregation, was under the control of federal courts. Federal judges had found that the Nixon administration repeatedly failed to enforce civil rights laws in a series of suits brought by the N.A.A.C.P. and black parents and children.
Federal judges were ordering and supervising H.E.W.'s enforcement of teacher and student desegregation of elementary and secondary schools and of dual systems of higher education in Southern and border states. I spent many months revitalizing the Civil Rights Office and convincing federal judges that we would enforce civil rights laws that Nixon had undermined.
JOSEPH A. CALIFANO JR.
New York, Jan. 9, 2003