Marshall, Thurgood

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Marshall, Thurgood 1908–1993

Thurgood Marshall was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on July 2, 1908. Later known as “Mr. Civil Rights,” Marshall devoted his life to advancing individual rights for African Americans, the poor, and the disadvantaged. He served as legal counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and as solicitor general; and he became the first African American Supreme Court justice. A talented advocate and jurist, Marshall argued for decisions striking down “white primaries,” which prevented southern blacks from voting in primary elections; “restrictive covenants,” or agreements not to sell land to blacks; and segregation in schools, transportation, parks, and other public accommodations. Former Supreme Court justice William Brennan Jr. described Marshall as “probably the most important legal advocate in America and the central figure in this nation’s struggle to eliminate institutional racism” (Davis 1994, p. 14). Marshall believed that lawyers can be social reformers and that equal protection was a right guaranteed to all regardless of race. His mission, according to Marshall, was to make “the law a reality for those to whom it is now largely meaningless” (Ball 1998, p. 382).

Marshall was born into a society that practiced racial segregation of people by law or custom in employment, housing, schools, parks, and stores, especially in states of the ex-Confederacy. Segregation meant inferior treatment, limited educational and job opportunities, and legal and social harassment on the basis of race. The lines were strict and rigidly drawn in the South, and Marshall was influenced by the arbitrariness and violence of racism that resulted in restricted opportunities, violations of equal rights, threats, violence, and death.

Marshall attended historically black Lincoln University in Chester, Pennsylvania, graduating with honors. He then matriculated at the historically black Howard University School of Law, where he met his lifelong mentor and friend, Charles Hamilton Houston. Houston believed that black lawyers were to be “social engineers” who had a responsibility to advocate to advance the interests of the group. Houston’s influence bolstered Marshall’s conviction that the U.S. Constitution could be a powerful tool against discrimination and to advance and protect the rights of African Americans.

After graduating magna cum laude in 1933, Marshall opened a private practice in Baltimore, Maryland. During this time he began his successful civil rights practice. In 1935, he filed suit against the University of Maryland Law School for its failure to admit Donald Murray based on his race. With Houston’s counsel, Marshall won the first case to require the admission of a black student to an all-white school. Marshall argued that Murray’s exclusion from the Maryland law school violated the “separate-but-equal” doctrine because Maryland did not offer an “equal” law school for its black citizens. University of Maryland v. Murray (1935) became one in a series of cases that relied on constitutional principles to topple the “separate-but-equal” system. In response to the Murray decision, a fellow civil rights lawyer said of Marshall. “He brought us the Constitution as a document like Moses brought the people the Ten Commandments” (Davis 1994, p. 18).

Marshall was appointed as the NAACP assistant special counsel in New York City in 1936. He later became director counsel of the NAACP, serving in that position for twenty-one years. While at the NAACP, Marshall implemented the legal strategy for the Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which involved attacking segregation in housing and education and racial discrimination in the judicial process and voting. Marshall also traveled throughout the United States talking to people about the unjust system of white supremacy that denied opportunity and justice to African Americans. During his employment at the NAACP, Marshall argued thirty-two cases before the Supreme Court and won twenty-nine of them. Through his work as a tireless advocate for equality, he became known as “Mr. Civil Rights.” Marshall successfully argued against excluding blacks from primary elections and convinced the Court that the enforcement of “restrictive covenants,” or private agreements not to sell land to blacks, violated the Constitution. In a series of cases beginning with Brown v. Board of Education (1954), Marshall’s work led to findings that segregation in public education, transportation, parks, and swimming pools is unconstitutional.

The 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education is perhaps the single most important case in which Marshall participated. Marshall and his team eloquently argued the unconstitutionality of “separate but equal,” relying heavily on scientific and sociological research that challenged the concept of race and racial distinctions. Grounded in research by noted historians and psychologist Dr. Kenneth Clark, Marshall argued that separate was inherently unequal and, therefore, offended the Constitution’s guarantee of equality. Clark’s work demonstrated that segregation by race resulted in psychological and emotional harms to blacks, who were stamped with a “badge of inferiority.” Marshall argued that segregation violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. The Court agreed with Marshall and his cocounsel and unanimously ruled that “in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”

His influence on the country and Supreme Court jurisprudence gained significant praise and attention. In 1961 President John F. Kennedy appointed him to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Faced with a broader spectrum of cases than he argued as a civil rights advocate, Marshall wrote ninety-eight opinions as an appellate court judge and, in many, continued to express concern for the poor and underprivileged in America. In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Marshall as the solicitor general of the United States. Marshall won fourteen of the nineteen cases he argued for the government, many of which involved civil rights and privacy.

Marshall was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967, becoming the Court’s first black justice. He served on the Court for twenty-four years until he retired in 1991 at the age of eighty-two. During his time on the bench, Marshall was a tireless supporter of the rights of the poor, opposing governmental action that unfairly or disproportionately affected the poor. In addition, he embraced First Amendment right of free speech and consistently opposed capital punishment as excessive. Marshall worked to protect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans and believed firmly in race and gender equity, as well as the need to remedy the ongoing effects of discrimination.

A champion for civil rights, Marshall was one of the country’s greatest advocates for racial justice and was responsible for a transformation of the American system of racial segregation. He believed firmly in the potential of the Constitution to protect the rights of the under-served, and after retirement from the Court he noted: “Americans can do better… . America has no choice but to do better to assure justice for all Americans, Afro and white, rich and poor, educated and illiterate … Our futures are bound together” (Davis 1994, p. 369). Marshall died on January 24, 1993. His death was mourned and his life was celebrated by thousands. At his funeral Vernon Jordan, former head of the National Urban League, remarked, “He was a teacher who taught us to believe in the shield of justice and the sword of truth, a role model whose career made us dream large dreams and work to secure them, an agent of change who transformed the way an entire generation thought of itself, of its place in our society, and of the law itself” (Davis 1994, p. 388).