was being made and that their citizens resented forced integration. Romney rejected this response, partly because when he was governor, Warren residents had thrown rocks and garbage and yelled obscenities for days at a biracial couple who moved into town. Now the secretary said, "The youth of this nation, the minorities of this nation, the discriminated of this nation are not going to wait for 'nature to take its course.' What is really at issue here is responsibility – moral responsibility." Romney visited Warren in July 1970, where he addressed leaders from it and around 40 nearby suburbs. He emphasized that the government was encouraging affirmative action rather than forced integration, but the local populace saw little difference and Romney was jostled and jeered as a police escort took him away from the meeting place. Nixon saw what happened in Warren and had no interest in the Open Communities policy in general, remarking to domestic adviser John Ehrlichman that, "This country is not ready at this time for either forcibly integrated housing or forcibly integrated education." The Open Communities policy conflicted with Nixon's purported use of the Southern strategy of gaining political support among traditionally white southern Democrats, and his own views on race. Romney was forced to back down on Warren and release federal monies to them unconditionally. When Black Jack, Missouri, subsequently resisted a HUD-sponsored plan for desegregated lower- and middle-income housing, Romney appealed to U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell for Justice Department intervention. In September 1970, Mitchell refused and Romney's plan collapsed. Under Romney, HUD did establish stricter affirmative racial guidelines in relation to new public housing projects, but overall administration implementation of the Fair Housing Act was lacking. Some of the responsibility lay with Romney's inattentiveness to gaining political backing for the policy, including the failure to rally natural allies such as the NAACP. Salisbury University historian Dean J. Kotlowski writes that, "No civil rights initiative developed on Nixon's watch was as sincerely devised or poorly executed as open communities." Another of Romney's initiatives was "Operation Breakthrough", launched in June 1969. It was intended to increase the amount of housing available to the poor and it initially had Nixon's support. Based on his automotive industry experience, Romney thought that the cost of housing could be significantly reduced if in-factory modular construction techniques were used, despite the lack of national building standards. HUD officials believed that the