Atlanta Daily World

U. S. Comes to Aid of Race Rail Fireman

Supreme Court To Hear Case
By EARNEST E. JOHNSON

WASHINGTON - (ANP) - As a friend of the court, the United States government acting through the office of the attorney general, last Thursday filed a brief with the United States Supreme court upholding the claims of two Negro petitioners against the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen, and the Louisville & Nashville railroad. The litigation is generally referred to as the Tunstall case, and comes before the high court on Wednesday.

Petitioners have charged that they have been discriminated against in job rights and other working advantages by reason of the fact that Negroes are barred from membership in the brotherhood. The union is recognized under the terms of the Railway Labor act as the bargaining representative for the firemen.

'Implicit in the grant of such rights is a correlative duty of the representative to act in behalf of all the employees in the unit without discrimination.' the brief declares. 'Congress would not have incarnitated a minority or an individual from representing itself or his own interests without imposing upon the craft representative a duty to serve on behalf of the craft as a whole and not merely for the benefit of certain portions of it favored as a result of discrimination against others.'

The brief says clearly that the brotherhood entered into and is enforcing agreements which discriminate against Negro firemen because of their race, and observes that the union is not acting in good faith as the representative of the entire craft.

Recalling the decision of the supreme court last spring in which Negro redcaps in St. Paul were denied bargaining rights although denied membership in a union which bars them, the attorney general's brief observes that 'if the Railway Labor act should be construed as depriving a minority of its rights to self-representation without imposing an enforceable duty on the craft representative to act in good faith on behalf of the minority, a constitutional question would arise which would not be subject to the limitations set forth in the cases decided at the last term.'