In addition to the cash payment and the promise to improve its treatment of blacks, the company agreed to hire Sharon Lybeck Hartmann, a Los Angeles lawyer with a background in civil rights, to enforce the consent decree and to monitor any civil rights problems that may arise. It also promised to begin a program in which blacks posing as customers would investigate whether Denny's restaurants were discriminating.

"With today's action, the message is clear: there will be a high price to pay for unlawful indignities, and the Justice Department will exact that price wherever the law is violated," Mr. Patrick said. "Unfair standards employed by restaurants must no longer be standard fare."

The settlements also suggested that after more than a year without a leader, the civil rights division at the Justice Department may be beginning a more active period. The division suffered a bruising political setback when President Clinton withdrew the nomination of Lani Guinier last year to head the division. Mr. Clinton left the position vacant for the first 15 months of his Administration.

Through much of the last year, the division also faced criticism from New York Democrats and Republicans for its handling of its investigation into the 1991 disturbances in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn.

Moreover, today's settlements reflected a revived partnership between civil rights and Government lawyers that had disappeared during the Reagan and Bush Administrations.

The two Federal suits settled today had been filed under Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which is known as the Public Accommodations Act. The law was often used in the 1960's and 70's to eliminate lingering segregation problems, but in the last decade it has not been widely cited.

Last year another restaurant chain, Shoney's, agreed to pay $105 million to thousands of black employees and job applicants to settle a discrimination case, but that case did not involve customers or the public-accommodations law.