THURGOOD MARSHALL

THURGOOD MARSHALL'S EARLY LIFE

Thurgood Marshall was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He was named for his paternal grandfather, a former slave who changed his name to Thoroughgood when he joined the United States Army during the Civil War (1861-1865). Marshall's mother, Norma Arica Marshall, was one of the first blacks to graduate from Columbia Teacher's College in New York City. His father, William Canfield Marshall, worked as a railroad porter and as head steward at an exclusive white club. William Marshall was the first black person to serve on a grand jury in Baltimore in the 20th century.
Thurgood Marshall grew up in Baltimore and graduated from an all-black high school at age 16. He attended Lincoln University in Chester County, Pennsylvania, the nation's oldest historically black college. While in college Marshall participated in a successful sit-in at a local movie theater. Protesters occupied "whites-only" seats to force the theater to cease making black patrons sit in a segregated balcony section. Marshall married Vivien "Buster" Burey in 1930. They remained married until her death in 1955.
After graduating with high honors from Lincoln in 1930, Marshall applied to the University of Maryland School of Law, which rejected him because of his race. Instead, he studied at Howard University Law School in Washington, D.C., and graduated first in his class in 1933.
Thurgood Marshall returned to Baltimore to practice law.Many of his clients were of modest means and could not afford his services. Marshall handled cases involving legal disputes, evictions, police brutality and other civil rights issues. He became known as the "little man's lawyer".
In 1934, Marshall was appointed to special counsel, Charles Hamilton Houston, of the Baltimore branh of the NAACP.

THURGOOD MARSHALL AND THE "NAACP"

Before serving on the Supreme Court, Marshall served as legal director of the NAACP. His tenure, from 1940 to 1961, was a pivotal time for the organization, as overturning racial segregation was one of its prime directives. Marshall, along with his mentor CHARLES HAMILTON (who was the first Black lawyer to win a case before the Supreme Court), developed a long-term strategy for eradicating segregation in schools. They first concentrated on graduate and professional schools, believing that White judges would be more likely to sympathize with the ambitious young Blacks in those settings. As the team won more and more cases, they turned toward elementary and high schools. This culminated in the landmark 1954 decision _Brown v The Board of Education_ which declared segregation of public schools illegal. By this time, Marshall was an experienced Supreme Court advocate, having already presented many cases before them, including challenges against white-only primary elections and restrictive covenants. He presented each of his cases in what would become his hallmark style: strtaightforward and plain-spoken. When asked for a defintion of "equal" by Justice Frankfurter, Marshall replied, "Equal means getting the same thing, at the same time and in the same place."
In 1939 Marshall became director of the NAACP's Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Over the next few years Marshall won 29 of the 32 cases that he argued before the Supreme Court. This included cases concerning the exclusion of black voters from primary elections (1944), restrictive covenants in housing (1948), unequal facilities for students in state universities (1950) and racial segregation in public schools (1954).
""Marshall began his legal career as counsel to the Baltimore branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He joined the Association's national legal staff in 1936 and in 1938 became its Chief Legal Officer. In 1939 Marshall became director of the NAACP's Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Over the next few years Marshall won 29 of the 32 cases that he argued before the Supreme Court. This included cases concerning the exclusion of black voters from primary elections (1944), restrictive covenants in housing (1948), unequal facilities for students in state universities (1950) and racial segregation in public schools (1954).
Marshall coordinated the NAACP effort to end racial segregation for the next twenty years. In 1954, he argued the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka before the Supreme Court of the United States, a case in which racial segregation in United States public schools was declared unconstitutional.
Cases argued by Thurgood Marshall include:

Smith v. Allwright, 1944 - Which ruled that a Southern state's exclusion of African-American voters from primary elections was unconstitutional.
Shelley v. Kraemer, 1948 - Which ruled that state judicial enforcement of racial restrictive covenants" in housing was unconstitutional.
Sweatt v. Painter and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, 1950 - both of these cases ruled against the concept of "separate but equal" facilities for African-American professionals and graduate students in state universities.

TMLL- THURGOOD MARSHALL BIOGRAPHY

WE WEAR THE MASK

"We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,- This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.
Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.
We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream other-wise,
We wear the mask!"
PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR

THE MANY MASKS OF THURGOOD MARSHALL

BLACK MEN, subject to slights and insults in American life, often wear many masks to hide their pain. Thurgood Marshall, who died at age 84, was a master of the art.
As a lawyer he was trained to mask his emotions at critical moments before any jury; Justice Marshall could make funny stories out of the times when Southern sheriffs threatened to kill him. But, ironically, later in life he wore an even thicker emotional mask to disguise the pain he felt from public life in Washington: Thurgood Marshall felt unappreciated.
Marshall masked his hurt with a cantankerous demeanor that kept most people at a distance. People who talk about Marshall as a gruff character are inevitably describing a man they met after 1961, when Marshall was named to the United States Court of Appeals, the beginning of a series of federal government jobs that took him out of the fraternity of black lawyers and into a wider white world where his stature and intellect were questioned.
In the 1940s and 1950s, Marshall wore a different mask. As the head of the Legal Defense and Education Fund of the NAACP, he was known to his legion of friends as an outgoing man who loved bawdy humor, card games and bourbon. He talked loudly and professed to wear life "like a loose garment." He persisted in that easygoing style even while black militants such as Malcolm X derided him as a token. Maintaining this persona was no small strain for Marshall, who routinely worked day and night trying to manage
This is an Op/Ed piece that ran in the Post following the death of Thurgood Marshall in January 1993.
The Washington Post January 31, 1993

THE MANY MASKS OF THURGOOD MARSHALL

THURGOOD MARSHALL AND THE SUPREME COURT

Thurgood Marshall was the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court. His nomination by President Lyndon Johnson followed a long and distinguished career as a civil rights lawyer who successfully fought inequality and discrimination. Marshall's courage and leadership in many areas of civil rights --voting, housing, and education--greatly improved the lives, opportunities, and attitudes of millions of Americans. As legal counsel for the National Association for Colored People Legal Defense and Education Fund, Marshall represented civil rights plaintiffs all over the south and argued more than 30 such cases before the Supreme Court, winning all but five. In the famous and influential case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Marshall convinced the Supreme Court that using race as the basis for assigning black and white students to different schools was unconstitutional, violating the equal protection guarantee of the 14th amendment. This 1954 civil rights victory overturned the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision establishing the "separate-but-equal" segregation principle. The Brown decision led to the desegregation of American public schools and society. Marshall's leadership in this and other civil rights causes earned him the nickname, Mr. Civil Rights. His reputation grew and in 1961, President John F. Kennedy named him to the U.S. Court of the Appeals for the Second District, a very prestigious appointment. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson appointed Marshall United States Solicitor General, the third highest post in the Department of Justice. In these high-level positions Marshall continued to lead the crusade for equal justice. On June 13, 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson nominated Marshall to be Associate Justice of the Supreme Court where he served for 24 years.

THURGOOD MARSHALL'S DEATH

"Three days after his death, on January 27, 1993, Thurgood Marshall came to the Supreme Court, up the marble steps, for the last time. Congress had ordered Abraham Lincoln's catafalque brought to the Court, and on it the casket of Thurgood Marshall lay in state. His beloved Chief, Earl Warren, had been so honored in the Great Hall of the Court, and no one else. Congress was right about the bier, and spoke with the voice of the people: no other American, of any age, so deserved to lie where Lincoln slept."
A VIGIL FOR THURGOOD MARSHALL

QUOTES BY THURGOOD MARSHALL

"A child born to a Black mother in a state like Mississippi . . . has exactly the same rights as a white baby born to the wealthiest person in the United States. It's not true, but I challenge anyone to say it is not a goal worth working for."
"Today's Constitution is a realistic document of freedom only because of several corrective amendments. Those amendments speak to a sense of decency and fairness that I and other Blacks cherish."
CREATIVE QUOTATIONS FROM THURGOOD MARSHALL