Thurgood Marshall: Segregation In The US

Thurgood Marshall was a great African American Civil Rights activist who changed a lot of lives in the United States. As a passionate lawyer and prominent Supreme Court justice he fought for Civil Rights and social justice in the courts and believed that racial integration is best for all schools. Very early in his professional life Marshall broke down racial barriers and overcame resistance despite the odds. He then became a role model of the disciplined leader, although he didn’t have the religious qualities or charisma as Martin Luther King. However, in terms of achievements, most of us would agree that he should be ranked next to Martin Luther King Jr. Thurgood was particularly famous for winning the Brown vs. Board of

To begin with, Thurgood Marshall’s dedication was important in ending Jim Crow. He had a major role in the success of the NAACP. He stood right by Charles Houston’s side going through thick and thin. Marshall was sent all over the United States to fight court cases involving injustice for blacks. He himself was denied the right to attend at a law school because of his race. He led to the end of Jim Crow by fighting segregation cases for more than twenty years. Many of his cases involved integrating black and white schools or getting admission for denied black students. In his time, he won 29 out of the 32 cases he argued in front of the Supreme Court. All the rights that Thurgood Marshall had won for black people ended the long era of Jim Crow.

I chose to research Thurgood Marshall, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X because I had already heard of all three of them but did not know exactly what their contributions were to the civil rights movement. Also I thought that they might very well be three of the strongest components to the civil rights movement so it would be interesting to compare and contrast them. Thurgood Marshall was exposed to law from a very early age as he and his dad often discussed court cases that his dad attended regularly. This childhood experienced help Thurgood Marshall develope the argumentative skills that ultimately lead him to win the Brown vs. Board of Education case and become the first African American to serve on the supreme court. Martin Luther King Jr. most important

When it comes to court cases, every case that is heard in court is heard for one reason or another.

the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any

Throughout the 20th century, Thurgood Marshall blazed the trail for the Civil Rights Movement from two sides of the American Legal System, both as a lawyer, and as a Justice of the Supreme Court. Marshall’s initial rise to fame came as a result of his success as the head lawyer for the Brown family in Brown vs. The Board of Education.

In the 1780s, there was a question of whether slavery would be tolerable in new territories to threaten the Union. Throughout the decades, many compromises were made to avoid disunion. But the Constitution was not clear on this subject which created quite the discussion nationwide when raised in 1857 before the Supreme Court in the form of the Dred Scott case. The Dred Scott decision was an eye-opener to Northerners that believed slavery was acceptable as long as it stayed in the South. If the decision took away any power Congress once had to regulate slavery in new territories, slavery could quickly expand into much of the western United States. Realizing that once slavery expanded into those territories, it could quickly spread into the once-free states. Many Northerners remained silent on the issue, this very possibility was too scary to ignore. Northerners who had not previously been against the South and against slavery began to realize that if they did not stop slavery now, they might never again have the chance. The growing fear in the North helped further contributed to an ongoing dispute between the two sides which eventually lead to the Civil War. A couple years after Chief Justice Taney read Scott v. Sandford decision, half of the Union had seceded and the nation was engaged in civil war. However, because of the passions it created on both sides, Taney 's decision certainly quickly accelerated the start of conflict. Even in 1865, as the long and bloody

While the Civil Rights Movement is considered a success, there is still racism in the United States today, in which blacks are still viewed as overly aggressive and overtly dangerous compared to whites. The racism we are familiar with today is called “institutional racism” and is not only shown in workplaces, but in schools and courtrooms. Institutional racism is defined as a pattern of social institutions who give negative treatment to a group of people based on race. To elaborate on institutional racism, starting with pre-school, black children make up only 18 percent of the pre-school population, but make up almost half of out of school suspensions. In K-12 black children are three times as likely to be suspended than white children. Now moving to the court system, black children make up nearly 60 percent of children in prison and are more likely to be sentenced as adults than white children. These statistics show that black’s, even black children, are more likely to be viewed as dangerous and subject to worse sentences.

During the 20th century I have read many books, newspaper articles and seen news broadcasts on two of the most famous Afro American Pioneers: Martin Luther King and Thurgood Marshall. Martin Luther King fought all his life for equal rights for Afro Americans, but Thurgood Marshall help elevate the Afro American civil rights struggles through legal precedents and timely court decisions. Thomas G. Kraftenmaker a professor of Constitutional law at Georgetown University Law Center wrote, "When I think of great American lawyers I think of Thurgood Marshall, Abe Lincoln and Daniel Webster". In this century only Earl Warren approaches Marshall. Thurgood Marshall is certainly the most important lawyer of the 20th century.

Thurgood Marshall was born on July 2, 1908, in Baltimore, MD. He was born to his Mother Norma Marshall and Father William Marshall. In his lifetime he was a civil Right Activist, Lawyer, Circuit Court Judge & Solicitor General, and a Supreme Justice. He died at the age 84 on January 24, 1993. He was married twice in his lifetime first to Vivien "Buster" Burey till her death in 1955 then to Cecilia Suyat till his death. He had two sons by his second wife Thurgood Marshall. Jr and John W. Marshall.

Just fifty years ago, America was a society of segregation and racism. The dictionary defines racism as “the belief that a particular race is superior to another.” Although it is clear times have changed, racism is still seen in modern american society. It’s also clear that relationships between African Americans and whites are generally better than they were in the forties and fifties. Today, it is rare to witness a black man walk down the street and step off the sidewalk to let a white man walk by, or to see a black man sitting on a different section of the bus or train because a white man told him he has too. But superiority of races is still happening. A lot of this has the do with the ignorance of others. Passed down generation to

Born Frederick Baily, Frederick Douglass was a slave, his birthday is not pin pointed but known to be in February of 1818. He was born on Holmes Hill Farm, near the town of Easton, Maryland. Harriet Baily was Frederick's mother. She worked the cornfields surrounding Holmes Hill. As a boy, he knew little of his father except that the man was white. As a child, he had heard rumors that

The fact he was a minority faced with discrimination his path to fight for equal rights was inevitable. He became one of most successful equal rights leaders and as one of the pioneers and catalysis in the civil rights movement. His success and ability in the courtroom along with his knowledge was noticed by many throughout the world to the point he was asked to assist in the development of two countries’ constitutions, Ghana and Tanzania (“Thurgood Marshall Biography,” n.d.). Thurgood Marshall may not have been the most popular civil rights leader, but his work in the courts proved he set the groundwork for other leaders like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X to reach audiences vocally across the country in keeping the movement alive and moving forward. We continue to see what he has done for equal rights and no matter your ethnicity, we all have benefited by his gallantry actions of equal rights for all.

One of the concepts that Malcolm X taught and wanted was separation of blacks and whites, not segregation or integration. He believes that this method was the most beneficial to blacks. Integration was never fully achieved in his time and segregation was never beneficial to blacks. Despite Brown v. Board, integration was not entirely accepted. In order for integration to function, both parties must be willing. In 1956, white students mobbed and rioted because of the admittance of black students to their school. One of these occasion was a high school in Tennessee and another at the University of Alabama, which only admitted the student after a court order. In the following year, the Arkansas National Guard was required to escort nine black

Protest against injustice is deeply rooted in the African American experience. The origins of the civil rights movement date much further back than the 1954 Supreme Court ruling on Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka which said, "separate but equal" schools violated the Constitution. From the earliest slave revolts in this country over 400 years ago, African Americans strove to gain full participation in every aspect of political, economic and social life in the United States.