legacy of Thurgood Marshall, The

Journal of Negro Education, The, Summer 1994 by Delon, Floyd G

INTRODUCTION

It is a very humbling experience to have been asked to write about this great man. This reaction is understandable in light of the many tributes already prepared by such well-known and distinguished personalities as fellow Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. (1991), and syndicated columnist Carl Rowan (1993). My main qualifications for the task, in addition to heading the National Organization on Legal Problems of Education (NOLPE), which is headquartered in the city where the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas case had its origins, are having studied education law even before that landmark decision and having read about many of the important events of Marshall's illustrious career as they occurred.

The dictionary defines a legacy as "something received from an ancestor or predecessor of the past." The something this nation received from Thurgood Marshall is found in what he stood for as an advocate and as a jurist. That stand is revealed in his briefs and oral arguments, his judicial opinions and dissents, and other public statements. As one examines a cross-section of the writings by and about Marshall, it becomes apparent that his legacy extends not only to the elimination of the various forms of racial discrimination but to the removal of barriers to equal opportunity for all citizens. This prologue focuses primarily on the highlights of Marshall's role in the struggles for equal educational opportunity, which are detailed in the sections that follow in this special issue of the Journal of Negro Education.

Recent biographies describe Marshall's childhood and young adulthood in a middle-class, racially mixed neighborhood in Baltimore, Maryland (Davis & Clark, 1992; Goldman with Gallen, 1992; Rowan, 1993). The writers relate several incidents, which strongly suggest that the value Marshall's family placed on education, and his early encounters with discrimination, directed him toward the subsequent role he was to assume in American history. For example, his mother sold her jewelry to help finance his college education at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. Moreover, after being denied admission to the University of Maryland Law School, Marshall began studies at Howard University in Washington, D.C., where he became an outstanding student, graduating as valedictorian in 1933, the same year that the NAACP adopted its strategy to attack racial discrimination in education through litigation.

Goldman and Gallen stress the important influence the dean of the Howard University Law School, Charles Hamilton Houston, had on Marshall. In 1935, Houston, who had left Howard to become Special Counsel to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), began filing a series of taxpayer lawsuits aimed at segregated graduate schools. The following year, he convinced the organization to appoint Marshall as its Assistant Special Counsel. Marshall referred to this development as "the break of my lifetime" (Rowan, 1993, p. 70).

MARSHALLS LEGACY AS A CIVIL RIGHTS ADVOCATE

It is somewhat ironic that the NAACP's first successful challenge in the quest for equal educational opportunities came in Maryland in Pearson v. Murry (1936), when Houston and Marshall represented an applicant who had been denied admission to the same law school that had rejected Marshall a few years earlier. Based on their argument that the state had not met its obligation to accord equal treatment to it citizens, the court ordered the plaintiff admitted. The university claimed the state had satisfied this requirement by paying tuition to an out-of-state institution. However, Houston and Marshall countered by introducing evidence showing that there were only 50 such tuition scholarships available for the 380 persons who applied for them (Marcus & Stickney, 1981). Noting the additional expense for travel or living away from home and the advantages of studying in the state where the student intends to practice law, the appellate court upheld the order. The court also rejected the state's proposed remedy: the creation of a separate law school for Blacks, stating that "compliance with the Constitution cannot be deferred at the will of the state" (Pearson v. Murray, p. 594).

Goldman and Gallen mention another case that Marshall handled while the Pearson appeal was pending. The issue in that case, which they do not identify by name, was discrimination at the elementary and secondary school level in a Maryland school district in which obvious differences existed between the education provided White and Black children. These differences extended to the quality of facilities, numbers of faculty, availability of transportation, and admission requirements. Black students who wished to attend high school were required to pass an examination; the 50% who qualified were admitted to the district's sole Black high school, to which they were required to travel at their own expense. White children in the district could attend high schools near their homes without taking admission tests. Marshall chose to represent a girl who sought admission to the all-White school near her home. After the request was turned down by the local and state boards of education, he filed a motion asking for an order arguing that the court should adopt the remedy accorded Pearson. However, the courts were not yet ready to begin desegregating elementary and secondary schools. Ruling that Marshall had sought the wrong remedy, the court held that he should have asked instead for the girl to be ordered admitted to the Black high school without an examination.