More than three decades ago – on June 27, 1991 to be exact – U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall retired from the nation’s oldest and highest court. Marshall’s departure from the hallowed chambers of the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) marked the end of an incredible 24-year tenure. Before the Supreme Court, he embarked on a 60-year journey as a fearless civil rights lawyer and advocate who valiantly fought Jim Crow Laws on behalf of millions of oppressed African Americans.
Marshall argued 32 cases before the High Court as an attorney, winning 29. Among his most memorable victories were Smith v. Allwright (1944), mandating that Black voters could not be excluded from states’ primary elections, and Shelley v. Kraemer (1948), striking down race-based restrictive housing covenants.
While all of Marshall’s cases argued before the Supreme Court were empowering, his most famous victory was the May 17, 1954 landmark decision Brown v. Board of Education. As a result of the strategy put forward by the Legal Defense Fund (LDF), a civil and human rights law firm founded and led by Marshall, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that “separate but equal” education in public schools was unconstitutional.
The plaintiff in the case was Oliver Brown, the father of a Black seven-year-old girl denied admission to an all-white school in Topeka, Kansas. Brown v. Board of Education actually represented a consolidation of lawsuits by African American parents experiencing the same level of segregation and racism for their Black children in public schools in South Carolina, Delaware, Virginia, and the District of Columbia.
Many legal scholars have called the Brown v. Board of Education decision the most profound ruling in the Supreme Court’s 235-year history. Much of Marshall’s winning argument was rooted in referencing “Black Codes,” a series of restrictive laws created in 1865 to limit or stop the economic, political, social, and educational freedom of enslaved Black people and their ancestors freed on the coattail of the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil War.
“From the day this case was filed until this moment, nobody has in any form or fashion, despite the fact I made it clear in the opening argument that I was relying on it, done anything to distinguish this statute from the Black Codes,” Marshall argued. “…which they must admit, because nobody can dispute, say anything anybody wants to say, one way or the other, the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to deprive the states of power to enforce Black Codes or anything else like it. We charge that they are Black Codes…They haven’t denied that they are Black Codes, so if the Court wants to very narrowly decide this case, they can decide it on that point…”
For Marshall, whose great-grandfather was enslaved and brought to this country from the Congo, the segregated and racist laws impacting African Americans were legally, socially, and morally wrong and misguided on all levels of humanity.
Born July 2,1908 in Baltimore, Marshall ultimately graduated from Lincoln University in Oxford, Pennsylvania (class of 1930), the nation’s third Historically Black College and University (HBCU). Believing that earning a law degree would equip him with the legal tools to navigate America’s racist system on behalf of underserved Black people and communities, Marshall applied to the University of Maryland Law School. The White institution denied him admission based on his race and the atmosphere of systemic segregation and racism at the vast majority of White Institutions in the 1930s, especially in the South.
Dismayed by the University of Maryland’s rejection, Marshall entered Howard University School of Law, the first HBCU to open a law school. After graduating first in his class, Marshall soon started a Baltimore-based law firm. Perhaps it was revenge or poetic justice, but Marshall represented the Baltimore NAACP in its winning fight against the University of Maryland Law School’s segregated policies.
Marshall’s legal reach extended beyond Baltimore, as the young attorney worked on hundreds of cases in small towns across the South on behalf of African Americans and their fights for civil rights. His stellar legal work didn’t go unnoticed. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy nominated Marshall to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals (2nd Circuit). In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him U.S. Solicitor General, and two years later, amid the intense Civil Rights and Black Power eras, Johnson nominated Marshall to become the nation’s first Black U.S. Supreme Justice. Marshall was sworn in on Oct. 2, 1967.
While sitting on the High Court, Marshall never abandoned his civil and social rights advocacy. He expressed strong opinions when his colleagues failed to render favorable rulings on Jim Crow and other civil rights infringements.
“In light of the sorry history of discrimination and its devastating impact on the lives of Negroes. Bringing the Negro into the mainstream of American life should be a state of interest of the highest order. To fail to do so is to ensure that America will forever remain a divided society,” said Marshall.
When Marshall resigned from SCOTUS in 1991, he had written over 150 legal opinions. Marshall died on January 24, 1993. He was 84. African American Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas succeeded Marshall. Many African Americans who have watched Thomas “in action,” or perhaps “his inaction,” have called him “The Anti-Thurgood Marshall.”
The Supreme Court has evolved over the three-plus decades since Marshall served. Today’s SCOTUS has frequently been questioned about ethics and becoming politicized in its controversial decisions to overturn landmark cases such as Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court will soon issue opinions addressing Trump v. United States to determine if there is presidential immunity – and to what extent – related to criminal prosecution for the January 6, 2021, insurrection on the U.S. Capitol. And could the High Court reverse Brown v. Board of Education one day?
With the Presidential Election slated for November 5, 2024, the dynamics of the Supreme Court could evolve in ways that will negatively impact America for decades. Democratic President Joe Biden will face off against former Republican president Donald J. Trump to determine who will serve America from the Oval Office.
When Trump was President in 2016, he appointed three Supreme Justices, giving the Supreme Court a conservative majority, with Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. Biden, as President, appointed Ketanji Brown Jackson, a liberal, as the first Black female Supreme Justice.
“The next president is likely to have two new Supreme Court nominees,” said Biden. “He (Trump) has already appointed some that have been very negative in terms of the rights of individuals. The idea that if he is reelected, he can appoint two more flying flags upside down would be the scariest part of a second Trump term.”
About Post Author
