When I joined the NAACP, I never could have imagined Thurgood Marshall, the head Special Counsel ("Thurgood Marshall"), would bring me into the biggest case of my career. In my times at Northeastern University Law School, I had written countless papers on the Supreme Court decisions preceding Brown v. Board of Education; and now I would be collaborating with the greatest attorneys the NAACP had to offer.
Representing over 200 plaintiffs from Kansas, Delaware, South Carolina, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. (Conaway, Judith 15), the enormity of the case hung over my head as the train inched closer and closer to the city and the NAACP’s New York office. I flipped over my copy of the New York Times, reading the column about the case once more, “Certainly no lawyer, and practically no member of the bench, had Thurgood Marshall’s grasp of the doctrine of law as it affects civil rights” ("Thurgood Marshall"). I disembarked the “whites-only” car and began my walk towards the NAACP National Office. As I sat in the waiting room of the
…show more content…
Placed before the most powerful attorneys the Legal Defense Fund had to offer were two dolls, one black and one white. Kenneth Clark, the psychologist used in the lower courts for Boiling v. Sharpe, had used these same dolls to support the detrimental effect of school segregation on children. To prove this, Kenneth Clark asked black children questions relating to the dolls. When asked to identify the “bad” doll, two-thirds (Good, Diane L. 28) of the black participants pointed at the doll matching their skin tone. Yet when asked which doll they relate to the most, the children pointed to the same “bad” doll, emphasizing the effects on children’s self esteem. But today, rather than children viewing the dolls, the attorneys would put themselves in the place of the participants and take part in the
Martin Luther King Jr. was a Baptist minister and social activist, who led the Civil Rights Movement in the United States from the mid-1950s until his death by assassination in 1968.
Thurgood Marshall was significant as he was the first African-American to be appointed a position in the U.S Supreme Court, in 1967. His significance to civil rights is evident between 1947 and 1967, in one contemporary newspaper he was even referred to as “Mr Civil Rights”. In 1947-1961 Thurgood worked as the NAACP’s lawyer, where he argued his most famous cases – Brown v Topeka (1954) and Browder v Gayle (1956). Furthermore, the appointments by both, President John F. Kennedy and President Johnson, are significant in themselves because he was the first African-American to be appointed to the Supreme Court. Despite his influence on the civil rights movement, Thurgood took a lot of criticism which effected his attitudes towards other people involved with the civil rights movement and, in general.
He began his career of law after graduating with honors from Lincoln University and graduating first in his class at Howard University. One of his first legal victories was suing the University of Maryland, which he applied to, for denying an African American applicant’s admission based on race. One of his other first cases was Murray v. Pearson, and he was also involved in the famous case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. He became the first African American justice on the Supreme Court after being nominated to the position by John F. Kennedy. Over his years on his career of law, Thurgood Marshall won 29 of the 32 cases he was involved in.
Thurgood Marshall was a U.S. Supreme Court justice and civil right propagandist. Therefore, Marshall earned an important place in American history on the basis of two accomplishments. First, as legal counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), he guided the prosecution that devastated the legal groundwork of Jim Crow segregation. Second, as an associate justice of the Supreme Court and the nation’s first black justice. He crafted a particular jurisprudence distinguishable by uncompromising liberalism, unusual attentiveness to empirical scrutiny beyond the formalities of law, and an indefatigable willingness to dissent.
“President Johnson appointed Thurgood as the first African American Supreme court justice.” President Johnson was the one who took a stand, not Thurgood. Thurgood didn’t really take a stand much, other than being the first supreme court justice and supporting the president over countless supreme court cases. President Johnson did most of the work. Really, what Thurgood Marshall did was help the president at the time take a stand against segregation. The Jim Crow laws at the time were being destroyed, with not much help from Thurgood, and a bunch of work from President Johnson. Thurgood just supported the president for a few cases, and that was mostly it. Thurgood didn’t really take a
After Thurgood Marshall’s Ground breaking win with the Supreme Court in the case of Brown v Board of Education it was still very difficult for minorities to be able to safely attend many of the of the southern with schools in the United States of America. For example the state of Virginia resisted conforming to the decision passed down from the Supreme Court bench in reference
Thurgood Marshall is a man that went to court for colored kids and white kids to got to the same school. He went to court in October 1967 and won the trial in 1991.
The Supreme Court ruled that segregation in public school systems violated the Constitution on May 17, 1954. The Courts decision faced great resistance from whites in the South. They threatened with violence, intimidation and other means as a reaction of the decision. After the decision, things were not easy and struggles remained. But through it all, it was victorious. The implementation (Brown II v. Board of Education) proved to be difficult. “Lawyers can do right, they can do good, but they have their limits. The rest of the job is up to society” (Patterson, 2001, pp
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Huey P. Newton stood up and fought for justice, equality and freedom for our people in this country. Huey Percy Newton was born February 17, 1942 and died August 22, 1989. He was an African-American political and urban activist who, along with Bobby Seale, co-founded the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. Martin Luther King, Jr. was born January 15, 1929 and died April 4, 1968. He was an African-American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. There have been several questions about the methods and strategies of each of these protesters. Some questioned whether or not MLK worked for the government in an attempt to keep minorities at bay by preaching peaceful protests and boycotts. Some questioned whether or not Newton was radical and promoted violence instead of self-defense or if he was a terrorist who wanted black supremacy. This study will compare and contrast the methods of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Huey P. Newton.
Thurgood Marshall - well known for his victory in the U.S. Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka - has died at the age of 84. Marshall’s education, determination, and appreciation for the United States Constitution and the rule of law are paramount factors which led him to become one of the most accomplished African Americans during the civil rights era. He played a key role in advancing equality for African-American men and women in the United States.
The road to the historic desegregation of Little Rock Central High school began in the 1930’s when the NAACP tasked future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall with fighting segregation in schools. By 1950 he had helped to strike down segregation in universities in several states. In 1951, the NAACP aided parents of black children attending public schools in Topeka, Kansas in attempting to overturn the state’s segregation laws. After a three year court battle, the 1954 Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education Topeka culminated in the abolishment of school segregation laws in 21 states. (Seeds 1)
On February 12, 1909, the NAACP, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, was founded. The NAACP was founded in response to the 1908 race riot in Springfield, Illinois and the terrible practice known as lynching. Their goal was to secure the rights, for all people, guaranteed to people in the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments in the United States Constitution. Even though some of the most important wins in court happened when Charles Hamilton Houston was the leader, his student, Thurgood Marshall, won some important ones too ("NAACP Legal History", NAACP.org). This essay is going to focus on some of the court cases that were fought when Marshall was in charge ( Janken, Kenneth R. "The Civil Rights Movement: 1919-1960s")
A chiefly odious ruling was written in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson. Argued before the Court in 1896 and ultimately overruled by Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, the Court, heard the case of a man named Plessy. One-eighths black, Plessy boarded a white-only car only which resulted in his arrest and jailing for violating of discriminatory segregationist statutes. The Court, under Justice Henry Billings Brown’s majority opinion, affirmed these segregationist policies establishing the infamous ‘separate but equal’ doctrine. As history would prove, the accommodations made for nonwhite Americans in many cases failed to even approach the threshold of equal. Plessy v. Ferguson stands in direct conflict with the promise of “equal justice under law”. With such a narrow interpretation of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, which in part provided for equal protection under law, the Court yielded great deference to a harsh sociopolitical environment, ultimately sanctioning the segregation that would defile the American dream for many years, until Brown v. Board. The only dissenter in this case, Chief Justice John Harlan’s now-canonic phrase “our Constitution is color-blind,” (Hutchison, 427) reminds us that, contrary to the idea of the majority in this
The overall analysis of the Sweatt case brought about the success of Brown v. Board of Education. Lavergne adds to this statement when he asserts that “Sweatt became the single-most valuable precedent for explicitly ending racial segregation in Brown only four years later. Sweatt made it clear that a law student could be exposed to the "interplay of ideas and exchange of views" under one condition only—a racially-integrated setting.” The foundation of Sweatt’s case laid the groundwork for the success of Brown. Affirmed further by Associate Justice Tom Clark, who voted in both the Sweatt and Brown cases, states, "In fact, not in Brown as people say, did we overrule [the separate-but-equal doctrine in] Plessy. We implicitly overruled Plessy in Sweatt and Painter..!”
Brown v Board of Education (Brown) (1954) marked a historic victory for civil rights in the United States. Chief Justice Warren declared the “Separate but Equal” doctrine unconstitutional, thereby moving the nation one step closer to a more integrated society. However, despite Brown’s monumental win for racial equality, it is undoubtedly obvious that the Court overstepped its boundaries in trying to push for progress. In Brown, the Court was unjustified in its actions to overrule Plessy v Ferguson (Plessy) (1896) and violated its constitutional limit in order to promote racial integration in public education.