Thurgood Marshall

Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was a man dedicated to assuring the basic freedoms expressed in the Constitution for all people. He lived during the time of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, and fought equally with them, though less attention is given to Marshall as a radical civil rights leader. He didn't believe in making the speeches that King made or in the fierce ideas of Malcolm X, instead, he believed it was only through changing the laws of America that true equality could and would be reached. Many believe that the beginning of the civil rights era was marked by a case Marshall argued in the Supreme Court. By winning the infamous case, Brown v. Board of Education, Marshall changed the law, and a new law was invoked. This law was for all schools to be integrated, and for segregation to be outlawed in public education. The outcome of the Brown case changed the very core of American Society. Although Thurgood Marshall felt his work and ideas took many years to come to any sort of fruition, his tenure as the first black Justice to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States marked the beginning of 24 years of honest work and dedication for the rights of American citizens. He worked not only to secure equal rights and privileges for blacks, but also women, children, the homeless, and prisoners. When Marshall died in 1993, a Washington Afro-American editorial wrote, "We make movies about Malcolm X, we get a holiday to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, but every day we live the legacy of Justice Thurgood Marshall."

Background

Thoroughgood Marshall was born was born to William Canfield and Norma Arica Marshall in Baltimore, Maryland, on July 2, 1908. He was named after his great-grandfather, a former slave and also a soldier who fought with the Union Army during the Civil War. Thoroughgood changed his name to Thurgood in the second grade, claiming that his name had too many letters for anyone, let alone his teachers, to remember. His father, William, worked as a railroad porter and steward at an all-white club during Thurgood's childhood. His mother was employed as an elementary school teacher in a segregated school, she was one of the first black women to graduate from Columbia's prestigious Teacher's College in New York City. His parents were tough, but kind. Often they made Thurgood prove every point or argument through debate and conversation. He credited this characteristic of his upbringing for helping him prove his cases in the courthouses. His family was known throughout the neigbohood as advocates of equality and fought for desegregation, long before Thurgood would help the law pass in court. William Marshall was the first black man to serve in a grand jury in Baltimore.

Thurgood attendend Frederick Douglass High School in Balitmore. During school, Thurgood was rambunctous and occasionally disruptive. The common disciplinary form taken at his school was for the student to go to the basement to copy and memorize various sections of the Constitution. By the age of 16, Thurgood admitted to having the entire Constituion memorized. It was this first exposure to the Constitution that gave him the desire to become a lawyer. His parents also encouraged him to learn and to reason. The support of his parents andtheir belief that he could be anything he set his mind to, combined with societies belief that he could never accomplish much considering his race and background, led Thurgood Marshall on a fight to change the world.

[1]; Thurgood Marshall Jr., a former top aide to President Bill Clinton. His son, John W. Marshall, is a former United States Marshals Service Director, and since 2002 has served as Virginia Secretary of Public Safety under Governors Mark Warner and Tim Kaine.

Education

After high school, Thurgood went on to study at Lincoln University in Chester, Pennsylvania, where his brother, William Aubrey Marshall, was also attending. During his education at Lincoln, Thurgood found himself in the company of the future President of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah; the famous musician, Cab Calloway; and the poet, Langston Hughes. Referencing Langston Hughes in an interview, Thurgood said that, "He knew everything there was to be known." He admired the poet greatly. In 1929, he met his first wife, Vivian "Buster" Burey and they were married on September 4, 1929. Their 25 year marriage ended in 1955, when Buster died of breast cancer. In 1930, after graduating as valedictorian from Lincoln, Marshall applied to his hometown law school, the University of Maryland School of Law. The law school, like many others had a strict segregation policy, and Thurgood was not admitted. This decision had its effects on Marshall, who never forgot this slight, and later sued the law school for their policy in his case Murray v. Pearson.

Norma Marshall, Thurgood's mother, sold her engagement and wedding rings to pay for the expenses of Thurgood's housing and education at Howard University in Washington D. C., where he was accepted into the law school. It was at Howard that Thurgood met, Charles Hamilton Houston, he dean at the time. Before Houston took over the academic procedures at Howard University, the school was known as the school for dummies, a school where people who couldn't get in anywhere else came to be educated. Within three years of hard and dedicated work, Houston raised the bar at Howard University, making the standards of education higher, to the point where it became an accredited university. Houston is known for his famous saying, "Each one of you look to the man on your right and then look to the man on your left, and realize that two of you won't be here next year." Thurgood took this advice to heart and found the dedication to assure that he wouldn't be one of the ones who didn't succeed.

Thurgood Marshall became a a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, the first intercollegiate Black Greek-letter Fraternities, established by African American students in 1906. Again Houston challenged him. He loved to say that failing an average student gave him no pleasure at all, he derived pleasure from failing and kickin out the smartest and most brilliant students at the school. During his first year, Thurgood came in at the top of his class. His studies centered around the Constitution and digging out the facts of the laws. Houston often told the all-black population at Howard that they couldn't be as good as a white lawyer, they had to be better, much better, because they would never be treated as equals, so they had to make up the difference.

During his second and third years, Thurgood became a student librarian. His basic functions were in assisting the university librarian and for this much of his tuition was subsidized. However, he still had to make a long commute both ways, as he and Buster could not afford to live in Washington D.C., they had to live in Baltimore. Most paramount in the education Thurgood received at Howard, was Houston's adamant teachings that the Supreme Court case of Plessy v. Ferguson, which advocated the "seperate but equal" idealogy into existence, must be overturned.

Law career

Murray v. Pearson

Thurgood Marshall graduated from Howard University in 1933. At that time he was offered a chance to go and set up a private practice in Baltimore. The following year, he began working with the Baltimore NAACP. He won his first major civil rights case, Murray v. Pearson, 169 Md. 478 (1936). This involved the first attempt to chip away at Plessy v. Ferguson, a plan created by his co-counsel on the case Charles Hamilton Houston. Marshall represented Donald Gaines Murray, a black Amherst College graduate with excellent credentials who had been denied admission to the University of Maryland Law School because of its separate but equal policies. This policy required black students to accept one of three options: 1) attend Morgan College, 2) the Princess Anne Academy, or 3) out-of-state black institutions. In 1935, Thurgood Marshall argued the case for Murray, showing that neither of the in-state institutions offered a law school and that such schools were entirely unequal to the University of Maryland. Marshall and Houston expected to lose and intended to appeal to the federal courts. The Maryland Court of Appeals ruled against the state of Maryland and its Attorney General, who represented the University of Maryland, stating "Compliance with the Constitution cannot be deferred at the will of the state. Whatever system is adopted for legal education now must furnish equality of treatment now". Because the state did not appeal the ruling in the federal courts, this state ruling under the U.S. Constitution was the first to overturn Plessy. While it was a moral precedent, it was not a legal one, and had no authority outside the state of Maryland.

File:Tmarshall.jpg

George E.C. Hayes, Thurgood Marshall, and James Nabrit, congratulating each other, following Supreme Court decision declaring segregation unconstitutional

Chief Counsel for the NAACP

Marshall won his first Supreme Court case, Chambers v. Florida, 309 U.S. 227 (1940). That same year, at the age of 32, he was appointed Chief counsel for the NAACP. He argued many other cases before the Supreme Court, most of them successfully, including Smith v. Allwright, 321 U.S. 649 (1944); Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948); Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U.S. 629 (1950); and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, 339 U.S. 637 (1950). In total, Marshall won twenty-nine out of the thirty-two cases he argued before the Supreme Court.

During the 1950s, Marshall developed a friendly relationship with J. Edgar Hoover, the director the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In 1956, for example, he privately praised Hoover's campaign to discredit T.R.M. Howard, a maverick civil rights leader from Mississippi. During a national speaking tour, Howard had criticized the FBI's failure to seriously investigate cases such as the 1955 murders of George W. Lee and Emmett Till. Ironically, two years earlier Howard had arranged for Marshall to deliver a well-received speech at a rally of his Regional Council of Negro Leadership in Mound Bayou, Mississippi only days before the Brown decision.

President Kennedy appointed Marshall to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 1961. A group of Democratic Party Senators led by Mississippi's James Eastland and West Virginia's Robert Byrd held up his confirmation, so he served for the first several months under a recess appointment. Marshall remained on that court until 1965, when President Lyndon Johnson appointed him Solicitor General.

Brown vs Board of Education

As a lawyer, Marshall's most famous case was Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). This case all began with a little girl, Linda Brown, who had to walk over a mile through a railway switchyard to her all black school when a white school was only seven blocks away. Oliver Brown, Linda's father, had tried to enroll her in the white school, but the principal refused. There, of course, had been many other similar situations, but the Brown family and the black people of the community rallied together, prepared to fight the separation law. Many thought it was "the right case at the right time" and the NAACP appointed Thurgood Marshall to lead the case. The arguments on both sides were extensive, with Marshall altercating the incontestable fact that segregation in school only prepared black children for the segregation of their lives in the future and left them with severe feelings of inferiority that needed to be stopped. Marshall's main goal was to finally put an end to the "Seperate-but-Equal" apartheid which had dominated American life since the end of slavery. The court ruled in favor of Brown, and little Linda Brown went to the white school. However, ending the influences of Jim Crow did not come easily or quickly. But, since the Brown decision in May of 1954 the rise of black graduates, not only from High School, but from College and other forms of higher education has increased dramatically. Schools across America were desegregated, and the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement began in earnest.

U.S. Supreme Court

On June 13, 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Marshall to the Supreme Court following the retirement of justice Tom C. Clark, saying that this was "the right thing to do, the right time to do it, the right man and the right place." He was the 96th person to hold the position, and the first African-American. President Johnson confidently predicted to one biographer, Doris Kearns, that a lot of black baby boys would be named "Thurgood" in honor of this choice (in fact, Kearns's research of birth records in New York and Boston indicates that Johnson's prophecy did not come true).

Marshall served on the Court for the next twenty-four years, compiling a liberal record that included strong support for Constitutional protection of individual rights, especially the rights of criminal suspects against the government. His most frequent ally on the Court (indeed, the pair rarely voted at odds) was Justice William Brennan, who consistently joined him in supporting abortion rights and opposing the death penalty. Brennan and Marshall concluded in Furman v. Georgia that the death penalty was, in all circumstances, unconstitutional, and never accepted the legitimacy of Gregg v. Georgia, which ruled that the death penalty was constitutional three years later. Thereafter, Brennan or Marshall took turns, joined by the other, in mechanically issuing a dissent in every denial of certiorari in a capital case, and from every decision in a case which the court did take which failed to vacate a sentence of death. See Woodward, The Brethren; Lazarus, Closed Chambers.

Among his many law clerks were Chief Judge Douglas Ginsburg of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, well-known law professors Cass Sunstein and Eben Moglen, and prominent critical legal studies advocate and constitutional law professor Mark Tushnet.

Marshall announced his retirement at the end of his term on June 28, 1991, citing his age and declining health as reasons. He told reporters, "I'm getting old and coming apart."

Death

Marshall died of heart failure at National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, at 2 p.m. on January 24, 1993. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. He was survived by his second wife, Cecilia Marshall, and their two sons, Thurgood Marshall Jr. and John W. Marshall. Marshall left all of his personal papers and notes to the Library of Congress. He also declared that his papers should be open for immediate use by scholars, journalists and the public. There is a memorial to Justice Marshall near the Maryland State House.

Timeline of Marshall's life

1930 - Marshall graduates with honors from Lincoln University (cum laude)

1933 - Receives law degree from Howard University (magna cum laude); begins private practice in Baltimore, Maryland

1934 - Begins to work for Baltimore branch of NAACP

1935 - Worked with Charles Houston, wins first major civil rights case, Murray v. Pearson

1936 - Becomes assistant special counsel for NAACP in New York

1940 - Wins Chambers v. Florida, the first of 29 Supreme Court victories

1944 - Successfully argues Smith v. Allwright, overthrowing the South's "white primary"

1948 - Wins Shelley v. Kraemer, in which Supreme Court strikes down legality of racially restrictive covenants

1950 - Wins Supreme Court victories in two graduate-school integration cases, Sweatt v. Painter and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents

1951 - Visits South Korea and Japan to investigate charges of racism in U.S. armed forces. He reported that the general practice was one of "rigid segregation".

1954 - Wins Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, landmark case that demolishes legal basis for segregation in America

1956 - Wins Gayle v. Browder, Ending the practice of segregation on buses and ending the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

1961 - Defends civil rights demonstrators, winning Supreme Circuit Court victory in Garner v. Louisiana; nominated to Second Court of Appeals by President J.F. Kennedy

1961 - Appointed circuit judge, makes 112 rulings, all of them later upheld by Supreme Court (1961-1965)

1965 - Appointed United States Solicitor General by President Lyndon Johnson; wins 14 of the 19 cases he argues for the government (1965-1967)

1967 - Becomes first African American elevated to U.S. Supreme Court (1967-1991)

1991 - Retires from the Supreme Court

1993 - Dies at age 84 in Bethesda, MD, near Washington, D.C.

For more, see Bradley C. S. Watson, "The Jurisprudence of William Joseph Brennan, Jr., and Thurgood Marshall" in History of American Political Thought.

Dedications

• The University of Maryland School of Law, which Marshall fought to desegregate, renamed and dedicated its law library in his honor.

• The University of California, San Diego has named one of its colleges after Thurgood Marshall.

• On February 14, 1976, the law school at Texas Southern University was formally named The Thurgood Marshall School of Law[2]. The school's mission is to "significantly impact the diversity of the legal profession."

• Justice Middle School, at one time a predominantly white school located in Marion, Indiana, changed its name to Justice Thurgood Marshall Middle School in honor of Justice Marshall's work on the Court.

• On October 1, 2005, Baltimore-Washington International Airport was renamed Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport in his honor.

• On August 3, 2004, Thurgood Marshall Middle School, in St. Petersburg, Florida, was opened.

• The Episcopal Diocese of Washington, D.C. voted at its annual meeting January 2006 to propose sainthood when the national church holds its general conference in June. He could become a saint in 2009.

• Near his longtime home in Lake Barcroft, VA, Columbia Pike is dedicated as the Thurgood Marshall Memorial Highway. In addition, the Lake Barcroft community awards the Thurgood Marshall scholarship to two graduating students of nearby J.E.B. Stuart High School.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Juan Williams, Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary (1998 book).
• David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, T.R.M. Howard: Pragmatism over Strict Integrationist Ideology in the Mississippi Delta, 1942-1954 in Glenn Feldman, ed., Before Brown: Civil Rights and White Backlash in the Modern South (2004 book), 68-95.

Preceded by: New seat	Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit 1962-1965	Succeeded by: Wilfred Feinberg
Preceded by: Archibald Cox	Solicitor General 1965–1967	Succeeded by: Erwin N. Griswold
Preceded by: Tom C. Clark	Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States October 2, 1967 – October 1, 1991	Succeeded by: Clarence Thomas

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