The Solicitor General at the time is Perlman and Perlman uh tells Phil to draft a brief
supporting a claim against restrictive covenants and that's the cas of Shelley against Kraemer
which is a very important case in the in the uh line of cases leading up to uh Brown versus
the Board of Education uh restrictive covenants were very importantly enforced against both
Blacks and jews they kept whole areas of cities and suburbs pretty much lilly white and Christian
you know it's hysterical to think of it but I can remember when I was ten years old my
brother had uh had passed away so my family couldn't live in the same apartment in Chicago
anymore on the west side because you know just too filled with memories so he went looking
around on the north side of Chicago and the suburbs for our new place and we were on this
street I don't remember what street there was one house a whole block nothing but a
prairie and a whole block and uh this was in Skokie one house my hometown oh is it yeah
okay and uh my parents look at it and they say you know well why don't we look at that
it's for sale no you can't look at that they don't allow Jews here Skokie that actually
happened wow well just the irony is that when my parents bought their house in Skokie it
had a restrictive covenant in it did it but by that time I'm sure you couldn't enforce
them anymore 'cause it had been on the books for years that's right it had been on the
books and it was unlawful but it was in the covenant it was in the contract anyhow okay
so Perlman did that and Phil wrote the brief and they won the case they write a brief and
it's a showing the flag as Phil puts it a showing the flag kind of brief a hundred and
fifty pages laying out the position of the Truman administration to do something about
the problem of restricted housing and uh what's interesting about that I think there's a there's
an ironic aspect to that that anti discrimination position of the Truman administration uh Phil
tells me that when they drafted the brief they put the name on it of Tom Clark who was
the Attorney General at the time uh which is unusual because attorney generals don't
usually sign briefs this was a way of saying this was a major major interest of the government
of the United States yeah they put the name of Phillip Perlman who was the Solicitor General
of Phillip Ehlman who was the assistant attorney general and the other attorneys who had worked
on the brief Hilbert Zarkey Oscar Davis Stanley Silverberg who were all special assistants
to the Attorney General yeah and it goes to another uh member of the Justice department
Arnold Raum who is Jewish and he crosses off the names of the last four signatures right
on the brief and he says to Phil it's bad enough that I have to have uh Perlman's name
on the brief but I have to put Perlman's name there but to have uh to have four more jewish
names on it is impossible we've gotta take them off uh it makes it look like there are
a bunch of jewish lawyers in the Justice department like a plot cooked up by a bunch of Jews in
the Department of Justice yeah yeah I think so This excerpt is brought to you by the Massachusetts
School of Law