Clinton Race Panel Gets New Oversight

The agency created by President Clinton’s initiative on race, which has operated independently for two years, will become the White House Office on the President’s Initiative for One America, a senior administration official said. Ben Johnson, acting director of the Office of Public Liaison, will run the office. The move reflects the evolving nature of Clinton’s efforts to conduct a national conversation on race. The panel, headed by Duke University history professor John Hope Franklin, recommended last fall that Clinton continue trying to improve the nation’s fractured race relations but did not specify how.