Title: Source: Document Type:

Marshall, Thurgood 1908-1993 American Decades. Ed. Judith S. Baughman, Victor Bondi, Richard Layman, Tandy McConnell, and Vincent Tompkins. Vol. 7: 1960-1969. Detroit: Gale, 2001. Biography

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 1994-2001 Gale, COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale, Cengage Learning

MARSHALL, THURGOOD 1908-1993

CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER AND SUPREME COURT
JUSTICE

Thurgood Marshall and other Supreme Court justices. Reuters/Corbis-Bettmann.

A Catalyst for Change

Thurgood Marshall was born on 2 July 1908 in Baltimore, Maryland. Earlier that summer there had been a riot in which two black men were lynched in Springfield, Illinois. For many blacks and white liberals the brutalities were a call to action. A series of meetings ensued which, within a year, resulted in the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). This was an organization upon which Marshall would have profound effects. It also was where he formed his legal reputation, which ultimately led to his appointment to the Supreme Court in 1967.

From Humble Beginnings

Marshall's great-grandfather had been a slave who was freed by his Maryland owner. Marshall's father was a proud man who worked for a time as a railroad porter and later as a steward at a country club. Marshall's mother was a schoolteacher. At that time most blacks attended one school and whites another, and as a black teacher in a black school his mother earned much less than the teachers in the white schools. However, between her income and her husband's they managed to raise their children in a relatively comfortable and

stable environment.

College
With his parents' financial help and by holding down a part-time job, Marshall was able to attend the prestigious Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, known as the "Black Princeton." Despite his roguish reputation, Marshall graduated in 1930 with honors and a wife, "Buster" Burrey, who was a student at the University of Pennsylvania. His application to the University of Maryland's law school was turned down because of his race, so Marshall enrolled at Howard University Law School in Washington, D.C.

An Attorney is Born
At Howard, Marshall graduated first in his class in 1933. As he later said, in law school he "found out what my rights were." Marshall's goal was to use the law to improve the conditions of black Americans. It was at Howard that he met Professors Charles Houston and William Hastie, who helped shape the young man's interest in civil rights.

Marshall's First Case

After graduation Marshall entered private practice. It was difficult going, trying to earn a living during the middle of the Great Depression, but a new direction was offered that had great significance both for Marshall and the nation as a whole. Hastie had become chief counsel for the NAACP, and he had its Baltimore office hire Marshall. One of the first cases that Marshall handled was a suit by Donald Murray, a young black graduate of Amherst College, who had applied to the University of Maryland Law School and had been denied admission because of his race. Marshall won the case in the Maryland courts, and the school was ordered to admit Murray. The lawsuit garnered national attention and marked the beginning of what became Marshall's personal crusade to end racial discrimination in education. In 1936 Marshall joined his mentor Houston in New York as assistant special counsel to the NAACP. When Houston resigned in 1938, Marshall became the special counsel. Two years later he was appointed head of the organization's newly created Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which provided free legal assistance to blacks suffering racial discrimination. He held that position for over twenty years.

Head of the Legal Defense and Educational Fund

Marshall was involved with many important lawsuits, ranging from the ending of all-white primaries, to striking down state enforcement of agreements to keep real estate from being sold to blacks, to integrating seating on trains and other modes of interstate travel. However, his most significant project was the drive to end segregated public education. In 1952 he litigated a case in South Carolina against a school system there. Later, this case was joined with several others on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court under the name Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. Marshall made the oral argument, urging that the justices end segregation and an abandonment of the "separate but equal" doctrine. The resulting favorable decision crowned his long struggle against racial discrimination in education. The Supreme Court ordered the integration of public schools with "all deliberate speed," marking a new era in American education. Marshall's success was, however, followed by the death of his first wife in February 1955; later that year Marshall married Cecilia Suyat, an NAACP colleague.

Government Service
Marshall's work with the Legal Defense Fund had made him the most widely recognized and successful black attorney in the country. In 1961 he was nominated by President John F. Kennedy for a judgeship on the Federal Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Marshall's confirmation process lasted over eleven months. His successes in civil rights cases had created many opponents, especially among southern senators. He was finally confirmed in September 1962. While on the bench Marshall was especially concerned with safeguarding the rights of criminal defendants. He was always particularly sensitive to the claims of individuals that their rights had been violated by the government. In 1965 President Lyndon Johnson called upon Marshall to become the thirty-third solicitor general of the United States. The solicitor general handles all the government's appeals before the Supreme Court. Perhaps more important, he or she determines which few of the many possible government appeals will be made to that body. Marshall's appointment was widely viewed as a stepping stone to the Supreme Court.

The Summit Is Reached

On 13 June 1967 these predictions were proven true when Marshall was nominated by President Johnson to replace retiring Justice Tom Clark on the Supreme Court. Johnson declared that nominating Marshall as the first black justice was "the right thing to do, the right time to do it, the right man and the right place." Again Marshall faced extended questioning by senators in his confirmation hearing. This time however, the process was less drawn out. He was confirmed at the end of August of that year by a vote of sixty-nine to eleven.

Casting a Long Shadow

On the Court, Marshall made a reputation as a judicial activist. He always kept foremost in mind the defense of individual rights. He often urged his colleagues not to be so blinded by legal reasoning as to lose touch with the plight of the people behind the facts. His sympathies extended especially to the poor and members of racial minorities whose rights, he felt, could at times be protected only by the courts. Marshall was especially determined to defend the gains he and others had made in civil rights and to extend them further. On 27 June 1991 Justice Marshall announced that his health required that he step down from the bench. Marshall's retirement at the age of eighty-two marked the loss of the Court's greatest advocate for civil rights.

Sources:
Susan Low Bloch, "Thurgood Marshall" in The Supreme Court Justices: Illustrated Biographies, 1789-1993, edited by Clare Cushman (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1993); "Choosing a Justice," Time, 89 (21 April 1967): 75-76; Leon Friedman and Fred L. Israel, eds., The Justices of The United States Supreme Court, 1789-1978 (New York: Chelsea House, 1980); "Negro Justice," Time, 89 (23 June 1967); Carl T. Rowan, Dream Makers, Dream Breakers: The World of Justice Thurgood Marshall (Boston: Little, Brown, 1993); "The Tenth Member," Time, 86 (22 October 1963): 94; "Toward the Seats," Time, 78 (22 September 1961): 25. Source Citation "Marshall, Thurgood 1908-1993." American Decades. Ed. Judith S. Baughman, et al. Vol. 7: 1960-1969. Detroit: Gale, 2001. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 17 Mar. 2010. Document URL http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE%7CCX3468302342&v=2.1&u=thou91049&it=r&p=GVRL&sw=w Gale Document Number: GALE|CX3468302342