Thurgood Marshall, 1908-1993
Crusader for Justice
Whenever the future lawyer, judge and Supreme Court justice got in trouble for talking in class or playing pranks, the principal pulled him out of class and ordered him to study the Constitution. What impressed the black teenager about the Constitution was its guarantee of equal rights to all Americans — with no regard to whether they are men or women, and with no special treatment for any race or religious group ... Reading the Constitution set young Thurgood Marshall on the path to becoming a lawyer. "Before I left that [high] school," he said, "I knew the whole thing by heart."
» From "Due Process" by Juan Williams in Footsteps: African American History, March/April 2003, p. 14.
Marshall's fearlessness, however, often landed him in trouble as a young boy. The grandson of enslaved people, Marshall displayed courage very early in life in changing what was not right to him. The bold step of changing his first name, Thoroughgood, to a shorter, more writer-friendly version was not the only time Marshall saw a way to improve his situation ... Once, after playing a particularly bad prank in high school, the principal sent Marshall to the basement and told him to read and memorize the U.S. Constitution. It took Marshall about 30 minutes to read the document, and then he proceeded to memorize portions of it. Studying the preamble and the articles of the Consti-tution familiarized Marshall with government structure. He learned, for example, that the Supreme Court, on which he would one day serve, was organized in 1790. He studied the Bill of Rights and the list of citizen rights and privileges. After studying the document, Marshall became keenly aware that African Americans were not able to enjoy the benefits that the Constitution said were their legal right.
» From "The Best Punishment" by Dianne Swann-Wright in Footsteps: African American History, March/April 2003, p. 6-8.
NAACP Legal Defense Team
Walter Francis White (NAACP Executive Secretary)
Robert Carter
William T. Coleman
Jack Greenberg
Thurgood Marshall
William H. Hastie
George E. C. Hayes
Charles Hamilton Houston
James M. Nabrit, Jr.
Frank D. Reeves
U. Simpson Tate
Franklin H. Williams
Delaware Case
Louis L. Redding
Kansas Case
Charles Bledsoe
Charles Scott
John Scott
Virginia Case
Oliver Hill
Spottswood W. Robinson, III
Washington, D.C. Case
Charles H. Houston
James M. Nabrit, Jr.
South Carolina Case
Harold Boulware
Thurgood Marshall
Community Activists
McKinley L. Burnett - Kansas
Gardner Bishop - D.C.
Rev. J.A. DeLane - S. Carolina
Rev. Francis Griffin - Virginia
See also the Teacher's Guide for the March/April 2003 issue of Footsteps, "Thurgood Marshall and Civil Rights".