No longer 'separate but equal' thanks to him

Human Quest, Sep/Oct 2002 by Rowan, Carl T

Second in a Series

AfricanAmerican Heroes We Should Know

Thurgood Marshall

Although Thurgood Marshall is seldom listed along with such persons as Martin Luther King, James Farmer and A. Philip Randolph, he was one of the most important of the civil rights leaders that have shaped American history.

A lawyer, he achieved greatness through his legal victories which eventually led to his appointment in 1967 by President Lyndon Johnson as the first African-American justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

He was born July 2, 1908 in West Baltimore, MD. His mother, Norma, was a talented musician and worked as a teacher in an all-black elementary school. Her husband, William Marshall, was a dining-car waiter on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad and later worked at a white dining club.

William Marshall instilled an early interest in law in young Thurgood by taking him and his older brother, William Aubrey, to the courthouse to watch trials.

The elder Marshall instilled something else in young Thurgood a fighting spirit and fierce determination to combat racial discrimination and injustices. Marshall, whose greatgrandfather refused to accept his role as a slave and was later freed, came from a lineage of African-Americans who fought against racial discrimination and persecution.

In 1925, Marshall entered Lincoln University in Chester, PA - the nation's oldest black college. It was in college that Marshall began reading W.E.B. DuBois's essays on racism. He was so inspired by what he read that in his first year there, Marshall joined fellow students in his first fight for racial equality by holding a "sit in" at a segregated theater. This event marked the beginning of Marshall's long fight for racial equality on behalf of African Americans.

On trips to school in Philadelphia he met Vivian Burey, known as "Buster," whom he later married. He decided he wanted to be a lawyer and, after rejection by the University of Maryland, an all-white law school, he went to Howard University, where he graduated first in his class in 1933.

Eager to become a successful lawyer, Marshall opened his own law practice in Baltimore in 1933 during the Great Depression. Marshall's timing for starting a practice was bad for his purse, but good for his people. The Great Depression caused financial hardship for nearly every American - especially blacks. And if there was ever a time blacks needed the law on their side, it was in 1933. Although Marshall's clients often could not pay him, he persevered in his quest to become a successful attorney and to help others.

One of his earliest victories was a case against the State of Maryland in which he represented black schoolteachers who were being paid the same salary as janitors. His successful argument resulted in raises for black teachers and principals.

Marshall's next noteworthy case was against the University of Maryland Law School. The school had denied admission to Donald Murray an African-American applicant - after barring Marshall himself a decade earlier. Marshall's eloquent argument led to the desegregation of the University of Maryland in 1935 when Murray was admitted.

At Howard University he had fallen under the influence of the dean, Charles H. Houston. When Houston became special counsel of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, he made Marshall his assistant.

During most of his career he had so little income from the small, generally poor membership of the NAACP, that he and his wife could barely subsist. He did not have adequate funds for travel to defend blacks in need or in danger. He was also often in danger himself, because most of his legal action was in the deep South where lynching was a frequent occurrence. So he often had to slip into town in an old car and out again as soon as his trial or other legal efforts were over.

No other civil rights leader, with the exception of the Freedom Riders through the South, had to face such serious danger. Yet he persisted for years, winning case after case.

Then, as Houston's health deteriorated, Marshall became chief legal counsel in 1938. In 1940 he became director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund.

During World War II, Marshall took on the U.S. military and won several landmark cases that opened doors for African-American soldiers to become officers and pilots. Largely because of Marshall's work in this area, President Harry S. Truman established the President's Commission on Civil Rights in 1946.

Over the years Thurgood Marshall won major cases on school desegregation and voting rights in the South. In 1952, he began arguments on his landmark case, Brown vs. Board of Education, which was a consolidation of five separate lawsuits launched by black students and their parents against institutionalized segregated school systems in several states.

The trial was dramatized in the 1991 film, Separate But Equal, starring Sidney Poitier as Marshall. In the 2-reel, 3-hour film one of the lawyers lamented that 7,173 segregated school districts were sapping American black students of their self-respect.