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Transportation Choice
William Thaddeus Coleman Jr.

[[image - black and white headshot photograph of William Thaddeus Coleman Jr.]]
[[photo credit]] United Press International [[/photo credit]]
[[caption]] Strong for civil rights [[/caption]]

By JAMES T. WOOTEN
Special to The New York Times

PHILADELPHIA, Jan 14—Ten years ago, when President Johnson offered one of this city's most important lawyers a United States appellate court judgeship, the answer was no.

"Turning down L.B.J. may be the most notable achievement of my life," William Thaddeus Coeman Jr. said today with a chuckle, recalling the late President's legendary powers of persuasion.

Despite that disclaimer, there have been considerably more important accomplishments in the career of the 54-year-old Philadelphian whom President Ford nominated today to become the Secretary of Transportation.

As president of the Legal and Educational Defense Fund, Inc., of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Mr. Coleman has long been at the cutting edge of the civil rights movement in this country.

He not only was co-author of the brief that helped persuade the Supreme Court to outlaw public school segregation, but he also served as co-counsel in a case that established the constitutionality of interracial marriages.

Moreover, besides serving as chairman of the White House Conference on Civil Rights in 1965, Mr. Coleman was a staff lawyer for the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination of President Kennedy, has served as an alternate delegate to the United Nations and has been a member of the Federal Price Commission.

"But this will be just my second, full-time government job," he said today, remembering his first with obvious pleasure.

It was as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter in 1948, a job he shared with an old friend and classmate from Harvard Law School, Elliot L. Richardson, the Ambassador-designate to the Court of St. James's. 

"He had strong views on a variety of subjects," Mr. Richardson recalled today, "but he always approached a case with strict legal and constitutional perspective—and brother, he was sharp."

Mr. Coleman had established that reputation before working for Justice Frankfurter and even before his graduation, summa cum laude, from Harvard in 1947.

A University of Pennsylvania graduate, he had completed a year of law school before he enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1943 and was assigned as defense counsel in 18 courts-martial.

He won 16 acquittals and one of the two convictions was later reversed. "And he wasn't even a full-fledged lawyer yet," Mr. Richardson said.

Mr. Coleman is a short, stocky man who dresses impeccably. He was born July 7, 1920, in the Philadelphia suburb of Germantown.

After his tenure with Justice Frankfurter, Mr. Coleman joined a prestigious law firm in New York City, and in 1952 he was employed as an associate in the Philadelphia firm of Dilworth, Paxson, Kalish and Levy, one of the city's largest and most respected.

In 1956 he became a partner and now, a senior partner, his name has been added to the others. He is regarded as an expert in transportation law.

Mr. Coleman is married to the former Lovida Hardin, a graduate of Boston University and the daughter of a New Orleans physician. They met during his Harvard Law School days. They have three children: William T. Coleman 3d, a 27-year-old graduate of Williams College and the Yale Law School who is serving as law clerk to a United States district judge in Maine; Lovida H. Coleman Jr., a 25-year-old Radcliffe graduate who is now a student in Yale Law School; and Hardin L. Coleman, 22, a senior at Williams College.

Despite the fact that their father is only the second black man ever nominated to a Cabinet position in the 200-year history of the country (the first was Robert C. Weaver, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Johnson Administration) his children find him not entirely perfect. 


NAACP Prexy 
(Cont. from Page 1)

his salary in his present post, community affairs manager for Detroit's gigantic new downtown Renaissance Center, in which Ford Motor is a big investor.

And the automotive manufacturer is delighted to share Washington's time and abundant talents with the people of Detroit in his new post with the civil rights organization.

Unlike most other presidents, Washington did not move up in the NAACP ranks. Although he has been an active member for years, this is his first office in the organization as a result of the membership's unanimous acceptance of the nominating committee's slate.

Washington admits that he gave considerable serious thought to accepting the important and prestigious leadership post after he was first approached about it last April, when he was chairman of the annual "Fight for Freedom" dinner.

"But I asked myself, 'Tubby, how can you find fault with what is going on in your city if you have an opportunity to reshape things and don't take it?'"

What does he hope to reshape? First, the grim crime picture.

"We must zero in on the crime situation," he warned.

Plans call for a strong, well organized mobilization of concerned organizations and interested citizens under the NAACP banner.

He is aware, painfully, that other organizations have tried to end the fragmented approach to crime without noticeable success.

But he is convinced that the situation has grown so intolerable that people are willing to act.

"Crime is the No. 1 topic of daily conversation, it is on everyone's tongue. I believe that Detroiters have had enough and that they will rally round our efforts to fight the common enemy."

And how about bussing?

The NAACP will continue to push for desegregation of schools, he replied.

"We can't afford the luxury of being put back 20 years," he said. "We must build on our gains, not just forget the past," he added, pointing out that the goal of the NAACP is and has always been school desegregation, not necessarily bussing.

A bit ruefully, he offered that he feared too many people, Black and white, have become too complacent with things as they are. 

"Those who have made it up the ladder must now, out of gratitude for their gains, reach down and offer a hand to those who haven't made it," he said.

The NAACP he noted, with obvious pride, is "healthy, strong and growing," And he pledged to do his best, which promises to be considerable, to see that it stays that way.

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