Thurgood Marshall

Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an American jurist and the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States.

Background

Marshall was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on July 2, 1908. His original name was Thoroughgood but he shortened it to Thurgood in second grade. His father, William Marshall, instilled in him an appreciation for the Constitution of the United States and the rule of law. Additionally, as a child, he was punished for his school misbehavior by being forced to read the Constitution, which he later said piqued his interest in the document. Marshall was the grandson of a slave.

Marshall was married twice; to Vivian "Buster" Burey from 1929 until her death from cancer in February 1955 and to Cecilia "Cissy" Suyat from December 1955 until his death in 1993. Marshall had two sons from his second marriage^*; Thurgood Marshall Jr., a former top aide to President Bill Clinton. His son, John W. Marshall, is a former United States Marshals Service Director, and since 2002 has served as Virginia Secretary of Public Safety under Governors Mark Warner and Tim Kaine.

Education

Marshall graduated from Lincoln University, PA in 1930. Afterward, Marshall wanted to apply to his hometown law school at the University of Maryland School of Law, but the dean told him that he shouldn't bother because he would not be accepted due to the school's segregation policy. Later, as a civil rights litigator, he successfully sued the school for this policy in the case Murray v. Pearson.

Instead, Marshall sought admission and was accepted at Howard University. He was influenced by its dynamic new dean, Charles Hamilton Houston, who instilled in his students the desire to apply the tenets of the Constitution to all Americans.

Marshall was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, the first intercollegiate Black Greek-letter fraternity, established by African American students in 1906.

Law career

Murray v. Pearson

Marshall received his law degree from Howard in 1933, and set up a private practice in Baltimore. The following year, he began working with the Baltimore NAACP. He won his first major civil rights case, Murray v. Pearson, 169 Md. 478 (1936). This involved the first attempt to chip away at Plessy v. Ferguson, a plan created by his co-counsel on the case Charles Hamilton Houston. Marshall represented Donald Gaines Murray, a black Amherst College graduate with excellent credentials who had been denied admission to the University of Maryland Law School because of its separate but equal policies. This policy required black students to accept one of three options: 1) attend Morgan College, 2) the Princess Anne Academy, or 3) out-of-state black institutions. In 1935, Thurgood Marshall argued the case for Murray, showing that neither of the in-state institutions offered a law school and that such schools were entirely unequal to the University of Maryland. Marshall and Houston expected to lose and intended to appeal to the federal courts. The Maryland Court of Appeals ruled against the state of Maryland and its Attorney General, who represented the University of Maryland, stating "Compliance with the Constitution cannot be deferred at the will of the state. Whatever system is adopted for legal education now must furnish equality of treatment now". Because the state did not appeal the ruling in the federal courts, this state ruling under the U.S. Constitution was the first to overturn Plessy. While it was a moral precedent, it was not a legal one, and had no authority outside the state of Maryland.

Chief Counsel for the NAACP

Marshall won his first Supreme Court case, Chambers v. Florida, 309 U.S. 227 (1940). That same year, at the age of 32, he was appointed Chief counsel for the NAACP. He argued many other cases before the Supreme Court, most of them successfully, including Smith v. Allwright, 321 U.S. 649 (1944); Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948); Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U.S. 629 (1950); and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, 339 U.S. 637 (1950). His most famous case as a lawyer was Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), the case in which the Supreme Court ruled that "separate but equal" public education was unconstitutional because it could never be truly equal. In total, Marshall won twenty-nine out of the thirty-two cases he argued before the Supreme Court.

During the 1950s, Marshall developed a friendly relationship with J. Edgar Hoover, the director the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In 1956, for example, he privately praised Hoover's campaign to discredit T.R.M. Howard, a maverick civil rights leader from Mississippi. During a national speaking tour, Howard had criticized the FBI's failure to seriously investigate cases such as the 1955 murders of George W. Lee and Emmett Till. Ironically, two years earlier Howard had arranged for Marshall to deliver a well-received speech at a rally of his Regional Council of Negro Leadership in Mound Bayou, Mississippi only days before the Brown decision.

President Kennedy appointed Marshall to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 1961. A group of Democratic Party Senators led by Mississippi's James Eastland and West Virginia's Robert Byrd held up his confirmation, so he served for the first several months under a recess appointment. Marshall remained on that court until 1965, when President Lyndon Johnson appointed him Solicitor General.

U.S. Supreme Court

On June 13, 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Marshall to the Supreme Court following the retirement of justice Tom C. Clark, saying that this was "the right thing to do, the right time to do it, the right man and the right place." He was the 96th person to hold the position, and the first African-American. President Johnson confidently predicted to one biographer, Doris Kearns, that a lot of black baby boys would be named "Thurgood" in honor of this choice (in fact, Kearns's research of birth records in New York and Boston indicates that Johnson's prophecy did not come true).

Marshall served on the Court for the next twenty-four years, compiling a liberal record that included strong support for Constitutional protection of individual rights, especially the rights of criminal suspects against the government. His most frequent ally on the Court (indeed, the pair rarely voted at odds) was Justice William Brennan, who consistently joined him in supporting abortion rights and opposing the death penalty. Brennan and Marshall concluded in Furman v. Georgia that the death penalty was, in all circumstances, unconstitutional, and never accepted the legitimacy of Gregg v. Georgia, which ruled that the death penalty was constitutional three years later. Thereafter, Brennan or Marshall took turns, joined by the other, in mechanically issuing a dissent in every denial of certiorari in a capital case, and from every decision in a case which the court did take which failed to vacate a sentence of death. See Woodward, The Brethren; Lazarus, Closed Chambers.

Among his many law clerks were Chief Judge Douglas Ginsburg of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, well-known law professors Cass Sunstein and Eben Moglen, and prominent critical legal studies advocate and constitutional law professor Mark Tushnet.

Marshall announced his retirement at the end of his term on June 28, 1991, citing his age and declining health as reasons. He told reporters, "I'm getting old and coming apart."

Death

Marshall died of heart failure at National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, at 2 p.m. on January 24, 1993. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. He was survived by his second wife, Cecilia Marshall, and their two sons, Thurgood Marshall Jr. and John W. Marshall. Marshall left all of his personal papers and notes to the Library of Congress. He also declared that his papers should be open for immediate use by scholars, journalists and the public. There is a memorial to Justice Marshall near the Maryland State House.

Timeline of Marshall's life

1930 - Marshall graduates with honors from Lincoln University (cum laude) 1933 - Receives law degree from Howard University (magna cum laude); begins private practice in Baltimore, Maryland

1934 - Begins to work for Baltimore branch of NAACP

1935 - Worked with Charles Houston, wins first major civil rights case, Murray v. Pearson

1936 - Becomes assistant special counsel for NAACP in New York

1940 - Wins Chambers v. Florida, the first of 29 Supreme Court victories

1944 - Successfully argues Smith v. Allwright, overthrowing the South's "white primary"

1948 - Wins Shelley v. Kraemer, in which Supreme Court strikes down legality of racially restrictive covenants

1950 - Wins Supreme Court victories in two graduate-school integration cases, Sweatt v. Painter and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents

1951 - Visits South Korea and Japan to investigate charges of racism in U.S. armed forces. He reported that the general practice was one of "rigid segregation".

1954 - Wins Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, landmark case that demolishes legal basis for segregation in America

1956 - Wins Gayle v. Browder, Ending the practice of segregation on buses and ending the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

1961 - Defends civil rights demonstrators, winning Supreme Circuit Court victory in Garner v. Louisiana; nominated to Second Court of Appeals by President J.F. Kennedy

1961 - Appointed circuit judge, makes 112 rulings, all of them later upheld by Supreme Court (1961-1965)

1965 - Appointed United States Solicitor General by President Lyndon Johnson; wins 14 of the 19 cases he argues for the government (1965-1967)

1967 - Becomes first African American elevated to U.S. Supreme Court (1967-1991)

1991 - Retires from the Supreme Court

1993 - Dies at age 84 in Bethesda, MD, near Washington, D.C.

For more, see Bradley C. S. Watson, "The Jurisprudence of William Joseph Brennan, Jr., and Thurgood Marshall" in History of American Political Thought.

Dedications

The University of Maryland School of Law, which Marshall fought to desegregate, renamed and dedicated its law library in his honor.

The University of California, San Diego has named one of its colleges after Thurgood Marshall.

On February 14, 1976, the law school at Texas Southern University was formally named The Thurgood Marshall School of Law^*. The school's mission is to "significantly impact the diversity of the legal profession."

Justice Middle School, at one time a predominantly white school located in Marion, Indiana, changed its name to Justice Thurgood Marshall Middle School in honor of Justice Marshall's work on the Court.

On October 1, 2005, Baltimore-Washington International Airport was renamed Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport in his honor.

On August 3, 2004, Thurgood Marshall Middle School, in St. Petersburg, Florida, was opened.

The Episcopal Diocese of Washington, D.C. voted at its annual meeting January 2006 to propose sainthood when the national church holds its general conference in June. He could become a saint in 2009.

Near his longtime home in Lake Barcroft, VA, Columbia Pike is dedicated as the Thurgood Marshall Memorial Highway. In addition, the Lake Barcroft community awards the Thurgood Marshall scholarship to two graduating students of nearby J.E.B. Stuart High School.

References

Juan Williams, Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary (1998 book).
David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, T.R.M. Howard: Pragmatism over Strict Integrationist Ideology in the Mississippi Delta, 1942-1954 in Glenn Feldman, ed., Before Brown: Civil Rights and White Backlash in the Modern South (2004 book), 68-95.

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