From: isbell@ai.mit.edu (Charles L Isbell)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american
Subject: This Person In Black History (1):  Thurgood Marshall
Date: 26 Jan 93 18:01:56
Organization: MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Distribution: usa
NNTP-Posting-Host: panther.ai.mit.edu

This Person In Black History

	1:	Thurgood Marshall (1908 - 1993)

written: 
	January 26 1993
sources:
	New York Times, January 25 1993
	365 Days into Black History
	From Slavery To Freedom, John Franklin
	Thurgood Marshall Biography material


Thurgood Marshall is one of the most well-known figures in the history
of civil rights in America and the first Black Supreme Court Justice.
He served on the Court for 24 years until June 28, 1991 when he
announced his retirement due to advancing age and deteriorating
health.  He passed away January 24, 1993.

Before serving on the Supreme Court, Marshall served as legal director
of the NAACP.  His tenure, from 1940 to 1961, was a pivotal time for
the organization, as overturning racial segregation was one of its
prime directives.  Marshall, along with his mentor Charles Hamilton
(who was the first Black lawyer to win a case before the Supreme
Court), developed a long-term strategy for eradicating segregation in
schools.  They first concentrated on graduate and professional
schools, believing that White judges would be more likely to
sympathize with the ambitious young Blacks in those settings.  As the
team won more and more cases, they turned toward elementary and high
schools.

This culminated in the landmark 1954 decision _Brown v The Board of
Education_ which declared segregation of public schools illegal.  By
this time, Marshall was an experienced Supreme Court advocate, having
already presented many cases before them, including challenges against
white-only primary elections and restrictive covenants.  He presented
each of his cases in what would become his hallmark style:
strtaightforward and plain-spoken.  When asked for a defintion of
"equal" by Justice Frankfurter, Marshall replied, "Equal means getting
the same thing, at the same time and in the same place."

President John Kennedy appointed Marshall to the United States Court
of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 1961.  It was not an easy
confirmation: a group of Southern senators held up his confirmation
for months, and he served initially under a special appointment made
during a Congressional recess.  Still, from 1961 to 1965, he managed
to write 112 opinions on that court, none of which were overturned on
appeal.  In fact, several of his dissenting opinions were eventually
adopted as majority opinions by the Supreme Court.  From 1965 to 1967,
he served as Solicitor General under President Johnson.  By the time
Marshall succeeded Justice Tom Clark on the Supreme Court, he had
argued 32 cases before that body, winning 29 of them.  President
Johnson said at the time that appointing Marshall on the Supreme Court
was "the right thing to do, the right time to do it, the right man and
the right place."

On the Court, Marshall said little during argument sessions, except to
train his sarcasm on lawyers struggling through their arguments or
sometimes on a fellow Justice.  During a death penalty argument in
1981, Justice Rehnquist suggested that an inmate's repeated appeals
had cost the state too much money.  Justice Marshall interrupted, "It
would have been cheaper to shoot him right after he was arrested,
wouldn't it?"

In fact, Marshall is often remembered for his dissents.  Of these, one
of his best known is a 63 page opinion in _San Antonio School District
v Rodriguez_.  The court held, 5-4, that the Constitution's guarantee
of equal protection was not violated by the property tax system used
in Texas and most other states to finance public education.  Marshall
accused the majority of "unsupportable acquiescence in a system which
deprives children in their earliest years of the chance to reach their
full potential as citizens."

Thurgood Marshall is survived by his wife, Cecilia, and two sons.
Thurgood Jr, previously a lawyer on the staff of the Senate Judiciary
Committee, is currently the legislative-affairs coordinator for the
Office of Vice President.  John is a member of the Virginia state
police.

----------

A Thurgood Marshall timeline:

  1930  Mr. Marshall graduates with honors from Lincoln U. (cum laude)

  1933  Receives law degree from Howard U. (magna cum laude); begins
	private practice in Baltimore
	
  1934  Begins to work for Baltimore branch of NAACP

  1935  With Charles Houston, wins first major civil rights
	case, Murray v. Pearson
	
  1936  Becomes assistant special counsel for NAACP in New York

  1940  Wins first of 29 Supreme Court victories (Chambers v. Florida)

  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
	
  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 U.S. 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 84
	
--
Peace.
             "Great spirits have always encountered violent
              opposition from mediocre minds."
                                  - Albert Einstein.
                                   -\--/-
    Don't just adopt opinions     |  \/  |       Some of you are homeboys
          develop them.           |  /\  | but only I am The Homeboy From hell
                                   -/--\-

From: patm@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM (Pat Murphy)
Date: Wed, 20 Jan 1993 20:06:34 GMT
Subject: Re: Re: Caucasion Whimps?  You be the judge!
Organization: Hewlett-Packard, Fort Collins, CO, USA