Recent Reading--Thurgood Marshall
I recently finished reading--Thurgood Marshall, American Revolutionary by Juan Williams.
Thurgood Marshall was the first black Supreme Court justice. He was the lead lawyer for the landmark Brown v. Board of Education. He had a voice in many of the important segregation cases in this country in the 40s and 50s. He was a federal circuit court judge and Solicitor General under President Lyndon Johnson.
Marshall was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1908. He had a brother, Aubrey, who became a doctor, a mother who was a school teacher and a father worked on the railroad as a waiter. When he was in college he worked summers as a waiter at an all-white club on Chesapeake Bay. He attended Howard Law school in Washington DC (the University of Maryland law school was not an option--it hadn't admitted a black man since 1890). He worked many years for the NAACP before accepting a judgeship.
Thurgood Marshall was not a perfect man, either personally or professionally. But he was tremendously energetic, successful in the things he set out to do, and dedicated to the cause of improving the lot of individuals in this country according to the promises set out in the Constitution. His accomplishments were myriad and significant, though he, unfortunately, also lived long enough to see the gains he fought for chipped away in ways that still threaten to undermine the principles on which his successes were founded.
When Marshall was about to move to New York to take a position with the NAACP, his brother was diagnosed with tuberculosis and his father was out of work. The best TB hospitals in Maryland, admitted only whites:
...Norma Marshall with tears in her eyes, told Thurgood and Buster that her troubles should not be their troubles. With a plainspoken approach, she said Thurgood's future was in New York and the family owed him as much support as they were giving Aubrey...staying in a failing law practice wasn't going to help Aubrey or anyone else.
Later, as a representative of the NAACP working to promote equal rights for all:
When Marshall spoke to NAACP youth groups and asked the youngsters what they were going to do when they grew up, the kids answered: "I'm going to be a good butler" or "I hope I might be able to get in the post officce." he thought to himself, That was it for them. He understood he was watching their lives get shut down before they were even grown up. He wanted to unravel this rope that was choking so many.
Trent Lott talks about being lynched as he sits in his office in his comfortable chair surrounded by supporters and synchophants. In the south in the 1940s, the issue was a bit more immediate:
...This time the policemen ordered Marshall out and pushed him into their car. They told him he was under arrest for drunken driving. The lawyer protested that he hadn't had a drink in several days. The police told him to shut up, then ordered Looby and the others to drive away.....
[Looby] watched with growing horror as the car turned off the highway and headed down a dirt road toward the river....Pulling over, one policeman got out shouting, his face red in anger, and ordered Looby to get back on the highway and drive to Nashville. Speaking slowly out of fear, Looby said he wasn't leaving until he saw Marshall.
...
With Looby still driving his car behind them, the police drove back to town. When they got to the square, they ordered Marshall out of the car and told him to go to the judge's chamber on the second floor of the courthouse by himself. Marshall told them he would walk over, but only with them. "You ain't gonna shoot me in the back. We'll go together," he said.
It's important to note in reading the above passages that Thurgood Marshall at that time (1946) had considerable power for a black man. He was recognized by blacks as "their top criminal defense lawyer and a civil rights leader." He had a network of friends that included Eleanor Roosevelt and other prominent figures. And yet, he was still someone who couldn't spend the night in many towns and who could be taken away and shot if the right people decided it needed doing.
And here, among other things, is why all of this matters:
In the thirty-nine years between his triumph in the Brown case and his death, Marshall saw the nation go from complete segregation through halting attempts at integration to occasional resegregation. When he first joined the high court in the late 1960s, almost two thirds of black students were in integrated schools. When he died, however, two thirds of black students were in mostly segregated schools.