only reject her recommendations, he would exclude her from any further involvement in such matters. White also allowed Carter's staff, which was all or mostly black, to meet with him regularly without first going through Carter. *202 He also called meetings of the predominantly black policy council without including Carter. The effect of White's treatment of Carter was not only that she was ostracized and her duties usurped, but she came to be unjustly viewed by her staff and policy council as a white person who could not be trusted and was probably racist. White created an atmosphere in the Head Start program that Carter was "one of them" and "not one of us." White did not treat other, black program heads this way.
In early 1983, the blackchairperson of the agency's board of directors created the Executive Head Start Committee, a predominantly white committee, to deal with the problems in the Head Start Program. The committee had been created at the urging of Carter and Jasper Fielding, a white member of the board. On April 5, 1983, an official from the HHS regional office in Atlanta, Georgia met with Carter and others and suggested that the board's and the committee's direct involvement in the Head Start Program might be illegal.
On April 7, 1983, Carter submitted her resignation to White, effective May 31. Four days later, White accepted it and began advertising for a new Head Start director. In the meantime, at the suggestion of Jasper Fielding, Carter decided to rescind her resignation, but only if