AMERICAN HISTORIES

How did a Republican politician who advocated the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II end up presiding over the most liberal Supreme Court in U.S. history? As attorney general of California at the outset of World War II, Earl Warren helped convince President Franklin D. Roosevelt to order the relocation of 110,000 Japanese Americans. After the war, as governor, he continued to fight against perceived threats to national security by joining the anti-Communist crusade. In 1953 President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Warren to be chief justice of the Supreme Court, a choice that many observers saw as a safe conservative pick by a safe conservative president.

As chief justice, however, Warren defied expectations and instead led the Court in a liberal direction. In 1954 Warren wrote the landmark opinion ordering school desegregation in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. Departing from his own strong anti-Communist record, Warren upheld the rights of political dissenters and extended the boundaries of free speech. The Warren Court did not shrink from controversy, and its rulings expanding the rights of accused criminals, banning prayer in public school classrooms, and upholding birth control as a right of privacy evoked harsh criticism from the police, religious fundamentalists, and conservative politicians.

Unlike Earl Warren, Bayard Rustin worked outside of regular political and social channels to achieve change. Raised by his Quaker grandparents in Pennsylvania, Rustin began his career as an activist for social justice in 1937 when he moved to New York City to work as a youth organizer. He joined the Young Communist League because of its commitment to economic justice, racial equality, and international peace, but the pacifist Rustin quit the organization in 1941 when the party supported U.S. intervention in World War II and retreated on its fight against racial discrimination during the war.

In 1942 Rustin helped found the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), an interracial organization that pioneered nonviolent, direct-action protests against racial bias. A committed pacifist, Rustin was imprisoned from 1943 to 1946 for declining to perform alternative service after he refused to register for the military draft. Prison strengthened his determination to challenge racial injustice through unconventional means. After his release, he continued to push for racial equality, and in 1947 Rustin helped plan and lead the Journey of Reconciliation, which challenged segregation on interstate buses in the South. In the 1950s and 1960s, he became an adviser to Martin Luther King Jr. and a major strategist in the civil rights movement in his own right.

Rustin remained active in various causes throughout his life. One of his last efforts was perhaps his most personal: the struggle against antigay prejudice. As a homosexual, Rustin had to conceal his sexual identity at a time when the public and his political allies rejected homosexuals. Rustin often had to work behind the scenes to avoid unfavorable publicity, and even Dr. King on occasion kept his distance from him. In the 1980s, as the gay liberation movement grew more vocal, Rustin spoke out for tolerance and equality until his death in 1987. •

THE AMERICAN HISTORIES of Earl Warren and Bayard Rustin demonstrate the complexity of social change. The federal government had the power to encourage social movements by interpreting the Constitution, enacting legislation, and enforcing the law in a manner that eliminated barriers to racial, sexual, and political equality. Yet federal action likely would not have happened without the pressure applied by activists like Rustin. At the same time, efforts to promote equality and social justice produced a strong reaction from conservatives who feared that their political and social values were under assault. By the end of the 1960s, liberal reformers had achieved many of their objectives, but they had also triggered a stiff challenge from conservative opponents who sought to roll back those gains and pursue their own policies of small government, low taxes, and self-help.