 Landmark
Case Biography
Thurgood Marshall (1908–1993)
Thurgood Marshall was the great-grandson of a slave and the
son of a dining car waiter and a schoolteacher. He was the
first African American justice of the Supreme Court of the
United States. He studied law at Howard University Law School
in Washington, D.C. under Charles Hamilton Houston, who has
been credited with transforming Howard into a laboratory for
civil rights litigation.
Marshall
graduated first in his class from Howard in 1933, and he
was drafted by Houston to help with the civil rights battles
then being waged by the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People (NAACP). He first served as special counsel
for the NAACP and then as the director of the NAACP Legal
Defense and Education Fund. He was the mastermind behind
the litigation strategy that challenged racial oppression
in education, housing, transportation, electoral politics,
and criminal justice. In one of his most famous cases and
victories, he represented Linda Brown in the Brown v. Board
of Education (1954) case.
In
1967, President Johnson nominated Marshall to be associate
justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He
served in this position until 1991. During his tenure,
Marshall was a strong advocate for equal protection
of the law. He was an ardent supporter of affirmative
action and probably influenced court decisions that
upheld the use of affirmative action in some cases.
Marshall believed that the Constitution was inherently
defective in its acceptance of slavery and gave much
credit to those who "refused to acquiesce in outdated
notions of 'liberty,' 'justice,' and 'equality,' and
who worked to better them. The true miracle of the Constitution
was not the birth of the Constitution, but its life."
What message was the artist of this cartoon trying to convey
about the life of Thurgood Marshall?
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