I | INTRODUCTION |
Thurgood
Marshall (1908-1993), American jurist, the first black justice on the
Supreme Court of the United States. Marshall came to prominence as the civil
rights lawyer who won the legal case making segregation in public schools
unconstitutional. Throughout his long and varied career, he was a tireless
advocate for the rights of minorities and the poor.
II | EARLY LIFE |
Thurgood Marshall was born on July 2, 1908, 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.
III | NAACP LAWYER |
In 1936 Marshall abandoned a private law
practice in Baltimore and moved to New York City, where he became a staff lawyer
of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). From
1939 to 1961, he served as director and chief counsel for the NAACP Legal
Defense and Education Fund.
At the NAACP, Marshall helped develop and
implement a strategy to fight racial segregation throughout the United States.
He worked closely with local communities and individuals to build support for
this plan. He argued numerous cases in local, state, and federal courts, as well
as the United States Supreme Court.
Marshall won almost all of the cases he
argued before the Supreme Court. In Chambers v. Florida (1940) he
persuaded the Supreme Court to overturn a criminal conviction based on a coerced
confession. In Smith v. Allwright (1944) Marshall convinced the
Court to strike down a Texas practice, known as the “white primary,” which
excluded blacks from participating in primary elections. In Shelley v.
Kraemer (1948) the Supreme Court agreed with Marshall that courts could
not enforce “restrictive covenants,” private agreements not to sell land to
blacks. In Sipuel v. University of Oklahoma (1948) and
Sweatt v. Painter (1950) Marshall won unanimous decisions forcing
the universities of Oklahoma and Texas to integrate their law schools.
Marshall’s most important victory came in
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), a case involving racial
segregation in public schools. He argued that the “equal protection clause” of
the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States requires that
states treat all citizens alike, regardless of race. Although precedent was
against him, Marshall persuaded the Court to unanimously declare segregation in
public schools unconstitutional. This decision laid the groundwork for the civil
rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. In addition to the Brown case,
Marshall won six other Supreme Court cases in the 1950s, leading to the
desegregation of public parks, swimming pools, local bus systems, and athletic
facilities.
IV | FEDERAL JUDGE AND SOLICITOR GENERAL |
In 1961 President John F. Kennedy appointed
Marshall to the United States Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which had
jurisdiction over federal district courts in New York, Connecticut, and Vermont.
In four years as a Court of Appeals judge, Marshall wrote 98 opinions
(essays explaining the logic and principles underlying a ruling), none of which
were reversed by the Supreme Court. He wrote opinions supporting academic
freedom, the right to a fair trial, and the right of civil rights demonstrators
to picket and protest.
In 1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed
Marshall solicitor general of the United States. In this position he once again
argued cases before the Supreme Court, this time on behalf of the United States
government.
V | SUPREME COURT JUSTICE |
In June 1967 President Johnson nominated
Marshall to the Supreme Court. Two months later, Marshall was confirmed as
associate justice of the Supreme Court by the United States Senate.
In his early years on the Supreme Court,
Marshall was a prominent member of the Court’s liberal majority, led by Chief
Justice Earl Warren and later by Justice William Brennan. Marshall wrote the
majority opinion in Stanley v. Georgia (1969), overturning a
Georgia ordinance that made private possession of obscene material a crime. He
spoke for the Court in Grayned v. City of Rockford (1972),
striking down an antipicketing ordinance that had been used against civil rights
demonstrators.
As the Supreme Court became increasingly
conservative in the 1970s and 1980s, Marshall was often a dissenting voice. He
frequently spoke out against the Court’s endorsement of capital punishment.
Marshall believed the death penalty was “cruel and unusual punishment” in
violation of the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. He also opposed the
death penalty because it was disproportionately applied to minorities. See
Capital Punishment.
Marshall opposed decisions that he believed
supported arbitrary police practices, neglected the poor, or chipped away at
civil rights. In Florida v. Bostick (1991) Marshall protested when
the Court found nothing unconstitutional about police boarding intercity buses
and asking individual passengers to allow their bags to be searched. Marshall
argued that few people on a bus would understand that they could legally refuse
to agree to such a search on constitutional grounds. Marshall saw this practice
as denying fundamental constitutional rights to the uneducated and the poor, who
were more likely to ride buses.
In San Antonio Independent School
District v. Rodriguez (1973), Marshall dissented from a decision that
refused to require San Antonio to allocate money to schools on an equal basis.
Marshall pointed out that students from the city’s poorest neighborhoods
received a substandard education, even though their parents paid a far greater
percentage of their income in school taxes than did the parents of students from
wealthy areas of the city.
VI | DEATH |
Poor health forced Marshall to retire from
the Supreme Court in 1991. Marshall died of heart failure in Washington, D.C.,
on January 24, 1993. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. He was
survived by his second wife, Cecilia Marshall, and their two sons. Like many
Supreme Court justices, he left all of his personal papers, including his notes
from meetings with other justices, to the Library of Congress. Contrary to usual
practice, Marshall declared that his papers should be open for immediate use by
scholars, journalists, and others.
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