JUSTICE: Back-Room Man Out Front

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The first day Brownell arrived in Washington he saw a Negro family being thrown out of a restaurant. The Brownell Justice Department took the Thompson restaurant case out of the hands of an uncooperative local prosecutor, soon won a court victory abolishing segregation in Washington restaurants. Brownell followed un with unpublicized conferences with businessmen and city officials, helped bring about integration in the parks, playgrounds, theaters and other public places of the nation's capital. A Justice Department brief helped persuade the Interstate Commerce Commission to outlaw segregation on interstate trains and buses. Brownell invited Southern transportation-company heads to Washington for behind-the-scenes (backroom) conferences about transit segregation in their cities. Result: more than 20 Southern communities have killed Jim Crow without fuss or fanfare.

For the 1953 argument before the Supreme Court on school desegregation. Brownell read every word, made extensive changes in the bulky, complex Justice Department brief. When the question came as to whether the Supreme Court should declare school segregation unconstitutional. Assistant Attorney General J. Lee Rankin recalls that the tension in the great marble chamber was "electric." Says Rankin: "Attorney General Brownell had directed me to say that the Government thought it was the duty of the court to find segregation unconstitutional. That was the answer I gave."

In the Role of Servant. Brownell's present civil rights program is the result of three years' intensive study (TIME. May 6). Such measures as anti-poll-tax legislation and a fair employment practices commission were considered and cast aside as too harsh or unworkable. The program, as finally accepted and recommended by Brownell, seeks primarily to provide tools for enforcing civil rights statutes already on the books. It is especially aimed at securing for Negroes their right to vote, which both Brownell and the program's Southern enemies recognize as the heart of the whole problem of discrimination. "If the right to vote is assured," says Brownell, "other rights will flow from that. Passage of this bill will show that Congress means to translate into reality the words of promise in the Constitution."

Political Realist Brownell knows how desperate a fight the South's congressional bloc will make against his program. He recognizes the extent of his personal, out-front involvement. But even if he could, he would not now retire to a back room. For the Attorney General is the servant of a Constitution which recognizes that law without freedom is tyranny, and that freedom without law is anarchy. It is in this role of servant that the Attorney General of the U.S. says: "No higher duty rests upon the man holding my office than of translating each provision of the Bill of Rights into a concept of living law so that justice will be done to all our citizens."