Thurgood Marshall Research Paper

Thurgood Marshall was born in Baltimore, Maryland July 2, 1908 and he grew up in a prosperous home in Baltimore also. Father William Marshall worked as a steward in a all white country club. Mother Norma Marshall worked as a teacher for kindergarteners and his grandfather was a slave who gained freedom from escaping the South during the Civil War. He became the first African-American justice of the Supreme Court, he was in the Civil Rights Activist, a judge & lawyer. He went to Colored High and Training school later called Frederick Douglass high school, Lincoln University, and Howard University school of Law. He got interested into law because of his father and brother having arguments at the dinner table when their dad would come back home
from listening to cases at the local courthouse. At his high school he was on the debate team and was the star member of the team because of his skills for arguing, for his misbehaving he had to memorize the whole United States Constitution as a punishment from his teacher, graduated high school in 1926. Went to Lincoln University where he was with a great student body Kwame Nkrumah future president of Ghana, Langston Hughes famous poet, and Cab Calloway famous jazz singer, graduated Lincoln with all honors in 1930. Before going to Howard University law school Marshall had applied for Maryland even though he was overqualified academically he was rejected because of his race after having his first experience to discrimination in education it made him realize what career he really wanted. So after being rejected from maryland he was accepted into Howard University law school. Marshall looked up to the dean Charles Houston who was a pioneering civil rights lawyer who was a notorious disciplinarian and extraordinarily demanding professor. Marshall graduated magna cum laude from Howard University in 1933. Marshall got married in 1929 to Vivian Buster but she later died in 1955 then he married his secretary at NAACP( National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) Cecilia Suyat and had two sons by her Thurgood Marshall Jr. and John Marshall. After graduating from law school he wanted to practice in Baltimore in 1934 he started working with the Baltimore branch of NAACP. His first case he had was Murray V Pearson, Murray was denied entrance into Maryland also because of his race just like Marshall. Marshall did this case alongside his mentor Charles Houston they won the case in January 1936 and diminished the legal basis for De Jure Racial Segregation in the U.S. He later moved to New York where he took on a full time legal counsel for the NAACP he argued many cases and won them helping to inspire the American Civil Rights movement by striking down different forms of legalized racism. Marshall successfully won his Chambers V. Florida case where he defended four black men who was convicted of murder on the basis of coerced confessions from the police. The Chambers V. Florida was before the Supreme court cases that he had, Smith V. Allwright case was a crucial victory Supreme court case in 1944 Court took down Democratic party’s whites only elections in various Southern states. His most achieved successful cases that he ever did as a Civil Rights lawyer for the Supreme court in 1954 was the Brown V. Board of Education lawsuit was filed by a group of black parents i Topeka, Kansas who were furious that their children were forced to attend all black segregated schools. Brown V. Board of Education one of the foremost cases of the 20th century, he challenged the head-on legal underpinning racial segregation “Separate but equal” initiated in the Plessy V. Ferguson Supreme court case in 1896. A concordant decision was made by the Supreme court May 17, 1954 that “ Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal” and that racial segregation of public schools contravened the 14th amendment. While Enforcement of the Court's ruling was proved uneven and was painfully slow Brown V. Board was provided a legal foundation and inspiration for American civil rights movement which unfolded over the next decade. The case made Marshall one of the most prominent and successful lawyer in America. In 1961 President JFK appointed Thurgood as a judge for the U.S. SCC(Second Circuit Court). He served as a judge for them for the next four years he issued more than 100 decisions which was overturned by the Supreme court. In 1965 Lyndon B.
Johnson Kennedy’s successor appointed Marshall to serve as the first black U.S. solicitor general, with two years of being solicitor he won 14 out of the 19 cases he had. In 1967 President Johnson nominated Thurgood to serve on the bench by October he was moved up to be a Supreme Court justice, him becoming the first African American to serve on the nation's highest court. He later joined liberal Supreme Court by Chief Justice Earl Warren, who aligned with Thurgood’s viewing on politics and and Constitution. He consistently supported rulings keeping a strong protection on individual rights and the liberal interpretations of controversial social issues. Part of the majority that ruled in favor of the right to abortion in the 1973 case Roe V. Wade, 1972 case Furman V. Georgia that led to De Facto Moratorium on death penalty, Marshall gave his opinion on it by saying that it was unconstitutional in circumstances. Throughout his 24 years on the court republican presidents appointed eight consecutive justices, he gradually became an isolated liberal member of an increasingly conservative court. For the part time on the bench he largely relegated to issuing strongly worded dissents as the court had reinstated the death penalty, limited affirmative, and abortion
rights. 1991 Thurgood retired from the Supreme court and was replaced by Justice Clarence Thomas. Thurgood Marshall died January 24, 1993 at the age of 84, he stands alongside Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.
as of one of the greatest and most important to the American Civil Rights Movement. Even though he isn’t that popular he was the most instrumental in the movement achievements toward racial equality. His strategies toward attacking the racial inequality through the courts represented third way of pursuing racial equality, more pragmatic than King’s rhetoric and less polemical than Malcolm X’s strident separatism. After Marshall’s death and obituary was made that said “We make movies about Malcolm X, we get holiday to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but we live with the legacy of Justice Thurgood Marshall”. The changes of his work was segregation was lifted for all public schools and other cases he did helped beat racism against the blacks. The actions that he made had a important impact on society today by stopping the segregation in public schools for colored blacks and many other crimes that were against colored blacks because of their race. The changes with the Brown V. Board of Education case helped colored kids to get the same exact learning as white kids and be able to go to the same schools as whites without any arguing. The work that Thurgood Marshall did can still be seen in today’s
society. He fought for equality everywhere and helped to end all segregation. His decisions and work affected the U.S. Judicial Branch. He fought for individual rights and created new protections under the law for all prisoners, women, children, and for the homeless. Most of the rights that we have now are because of Marshall and his excellent work on the most crucial cases in history Brown V. Board of Education, Murray V. Pearson, Chambers V. Florida, Smith V. Allwright with these cases brought on other significant tasks that led us to have our rights that go along with the amendments like the 14th amendment that was violated by public school segregation between whites and blacks. The abortion rights came into place with the 1973 Roe V. Wade when Marshall successfully defended Roe to have the right to abortions. His Successes during the Civil Rights Movement has made a very important impact on blacks justice rights, he changed rulings in the Supreme Court for justice of the blacks and many people thanked him for that. Thurgood Marshall and his actions during the Civil Rights movement are talked about amongst others and are taught in history lessons for his actions and his cases that he had did, the most popular case that is most talked about is the Brown V. BOE which helped black kids get same teaching as whites. Marshall is a legend to the Civil Rights like MLK, Malcolm X, Rosa PArks and so on he is the first African American to be in the Supreme Court and is well known for it.