116

6425 Cedar Drive
Falls Church, Va.
December 4, 1953

M. Joseph Bradley
Algona, Iowa

Dear Joe:

It's a long time since I wrote you; but for a long time, I didn't write anybody, partly because we were too busy, and partly because I was having one hell of a time keeping my mouth shut. Now, however, the project has been released, and I have more time to think.

Right in the middle of my preparations to come out and visit Iowa with a view to staying, I got an offer to work on the Government's brief in the school segregation cases. Why I got it is a long story, and mostly irrelevant. But I got it. And I took it, of course, because all things considered, it is the most important case on the docket this term. It had originally been briefed and argued in the fall of 1952, under Attorney General McGranery---having typed the name I spit.

In the earlier argument, an unequivocal stand against segregation had been taken; the Court, unable to make up its own mind, had set the case down in June for reargument, principally on five questions which it asked. Two of the questions, and part of a third, concerned the legislative history of the Fourteenth Amendment, and legislative history has been my hobby for a few years.

This was, of course, the first time that the new Administration had been put on the spot on the race question; and it was quite a spot, as you can guess. One of the reasons the South had liked Eisenhower was because they thought he would equivocate on the racial question. True, he had expressed himself strongly on the racial issue generally, and in the District of Columbia; but he had also taken a strong stand on states' rights. Now, this is true, that to the rest of the Union, states' rights means an awful lot of diverse things, but to the South, it means the right of the states to continue racial inequalities if they so desire.

The historical job, principally the legislative history of the Congress from 1863 to 1875, turns out so far as the brief itself is concerned, to be mainly negative in its importance. By a thorough job, and while it may not be very brilliant, it is sure as hell thorough, we kept the parties to the case, colored and Southern, honest in their claims of what the Congress intended. As we conclude, restrainedly, the legislative history is not conclusive; but it is highly suggestive. And the suggestion is against segregation.

Where the historical reasoning was important, and so important as to me at least to be crucial, was to remind this Administration of the beginnings of the party to which they adhere. It is one thing to state