Thurgood Marshall (28 page)

Marshall began his closing argument by reminding the jury that there was no evidence any rape had occurred. He closed with a patriotic appeal. “There’s nobody who believes in the democratic principles of government more than my people,” he said. “Cases like this are cases that try men’s souls.”
⁹

As he was talking to the jurors, Marshall noticed that every one of the men had on a Shriner’s pin. After the jury went out, Marshall went to Judge Futch’s chamber and asked if he had seen the state’s attorney motion to the jury, three times, using a secret Masonic distress signal. “Yeah, as a matter of fact, it was four,” Futch told Marshall with a laugh. Marshall said, “I’m going to make an objection.” Futch told him he would be overruled. “There’s nothing racial about that,” Judge Futch told Marshall. “He does it
all
the time, whether you’re white, black, or green. He gives the distress signal all the time.”

The jury came back within ninety minutes. One court observer later told Marshall they only took that long because the men wanted to smoke their cigars.

The verdict was guilty. Irvin was sentenced to death in the electric chair. For the first time in his legal career, Marshall had to fight back tears. He immediately rushed over to Irvin’s mother to reassure her that the NAACP would appeal again. “Irvin’s mother had me awake all night, every night,” Marshall said. “She had the most impressive face I’ve ever seen on a woman, real high cheekbones and a whole lot of red in that black, a lot of Indian. And she just had these piercing eyes, and she told me not once but four times, ‘Don’t you let my son die.’ I’m going to be stuck with that for life.”

The emotions in the
Irvin
case resonated with Marshall’s still unsettled
emotions about the “Black Dillingers” case in Prince Georges County, Maryland. He had lost that client to a death sentence by hanging, and that time he’d blamed his inexperience. Now a more experienced Marshall decided he would do anything to stop Irvin from being executed.

Marshall appealed the case at every level until the Supreme Court refused to review it. But the lengthy appeals delayed the execution and gave Marshall time to work on other options to keep Irvin alive. Using political and NAACP contacts, he put public pressure on the governor and generated loud headlines, week after week, about various details in the case. The black press as well as international newspapers made the Florida case almost a running feature. The state legislature, the U.S. Congress, and the Justice Department were all well aware of the negative fallout from the
Irvin
case. With the pressure building from all sides, Gov. LeRoy Collins, three years after Irvin had been assigned to death row, changed the sentence to life in prison. Several years later, Irvin was finally released.
¹⁰

The governor’s decision was pure politics. And it was a win for Marshall, who had been able to apply just the right political pressure to get the governor to act. The
Irvin
case had shown Marshall to be a wily political player, both inside the NAACP and even in an unsympathetic southern state. But Marshall’s political skills were about to face an even tougher test, on the national stage, from FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.

Lessons in Politics

J
. E
DGAR
H
OOVER TOOK A STRONG, IMMEDIATE DISLIKE
to Thurgood Marshall. Hoover’s boss, Attorney General Tom Clark, kept getting complaints from the NAACP lawyer about the behavior of Hoover’s FBI agents in the South. Marshall regularly charged that the FBI was not investigating hate crimes committed by white racists—even lynch mobs—against black people. Marshall said Hoover’s agents were spending their time covering up for their friends in southern sheriffs’ departments, who were often sympathetic to the mobs.

The NAACP lawyer was particularly incensed over the FBI’s failure to properly investigate the notorious 1946 beating of Isaac Woodard. The day of his discharge from the army, after fifteen months of jungle fighting in the Philippines, Woodard was on his way to visit his mother. At one stop he delayed the bus driver while using the bathroom. At the next stop, in Aiken, South Carolina, the driver asked him to step off the bus for a moment. Two policemen were there to greet him. The driver shouted that Woodard was drunk and creating “a disturbance” on the bus.

When Woodard protested that he had done nothing wrong, the policemen clubbed him and put him in their car. Once they got Woodard to the jail, they beat him with a blackjack and nightstick. At one point, as Woodard was on the ground and helpless, the policeman purposely shoved the end of his nightstick at both of Woodard’s eyes, completely blinding him.

News of the attack rang like an alarm through much of the nation.
The horrific beating drew attention from people who had previously ignored claims that southern police regularly beat blacks for no reason. When the prosecutors failed to convict the policemen who beat Woodard, explaining that the FBI’s investigation of the incident had turned up little evidence, Marshall became angry and sent another fiery letter to Attorney General Clark. In the December 1946 letter Marshall charged that the bureau was suspiciously incompetent when it came to protecting the rights of black people: “[The FBI’s] great record extends from the prosecution of vicious spies and saboteurs … to nondescript hoodlums who steal cheap automobiles.… On the other hand, the FBI has been unable to identify or bring to trial persons charged with violations of federal statutes where Negroes are the victims.”
¹

Despite the sharp twang of his Texas accent, Clark was well known for liberal tendencies on civil rights. He sent a copy of Marshall’s stinging letter to Hoover and demanded a response. Hoover wrote a four-page retort that dripped with deep, personal anger at the NAACP attorney. He said he did not think Marshall would accept a “factual explanation” of the bureau’s investigations: “I have found from previous dealings with [Marshall] that he is most careless as to the truth and facts in the charges which he makes against the FBI.” The FBI chief argued that the bureau’s problem with race crimes was that civil rights laws required a high level of evidence, and it was difficult to find evidence or witnesses willing to talk about these crimes. “I believe that Mr. Marshall’s obvious hostility to the Bureau dominates the thinking of his associates in the legal operation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People,” he concluded in his January 1947 response.
²

Hoover didn’t let the issue drop there. He decided to call Marshall’s bluff and embarrass him in front of the attorney general. Hoover dared Marshall to give him the names of people who claimed to be victims of FBI wrongdoing in the South. Marshall was trapped. He didn’t want to appear to have made up the complaints, but he was more concerned that if he gave Hoover the names of the people, FBI agents and local authorities would go after them. Marshall decided not to release the names, and a newly defiant Hoover held fast to denials that his agents had looked away from criminal actions by white police.

Hoover had headed the FBI since 1924 and was deeply entrenched at the bureau and in political Washington. Clark was Hoover’s boss, but he understood that by 1946 Hoover had seen attorneys general come and go. He also had to face the fact that Hoover was right—the laws were
weak and difficult to prosecute. In January, Clark wrote to Marshall that after his review he felt it was not fair to blame Hoover’s agents for the continuing problems facing black people in the South.

Marshall was irate that Hoover had outmaneuvered him. But worst of all, Marshall was in a weaker position than when he started. The FBI and Hoover now considered him an opponent and were less likely to take strong action against race crimes in the South. Marshall decided his only choice was to travel to Washington and speak with the attorney general himself.

Marshall had no assurances that Clark would make the time to see him. But Clark was sensitive to President Truman’s need to hold together a Democratic Party that was splintering after the death of Roosevelt. He recognized the NAACP’s growing political clout, not only with blacks but with moderate and liberal whites. When Clark decided to meet one on one with Marshall, it was a sign not only of the NAACP’s power but also of Marshall’s growing status as the nation’s best-known civil rights attorney.

In the meeting Clark caught Marshall off guard by agreeing that the government had to do more to end attacks on black people. And the bow-tied Texan said he wanted tougher antilynching laws. Just when Marshall felt he had Clark totally on his side, the attorney general engaged the young lawyer in a long conversation about the need to keep an open line to Hoover and the FBI. The bureau, Clark insisted, was the only federal agency in position to keep watch over the bigots in southern police departments. He persuaded Marshall to tone down his criticism or risk alienating a potentially powerful ally in Hoover and the bureau.

When Hoover found out about Marshall’s visit with Clark, the FBI director sent a sharp letter to Walter White, whom he had known for some time, complaining that Marshall was hurting the NAACP’s reputation and relationship with the FBI. “I wanted to bring to your attention a situation which is causing me increasing concern,” he wrote. The hostile lawyer, he charged, had repeatedly tried “to embarrass” the FBI and to discredit the bureau’s investigations, “particularly of cases involving civil rights of Negroes.”

Hoover charged Marshall with being dishonest. “I, of course, recognize the right of Mr. Marshall to have a personal opinion.… I do not think, however, that when Mr. Marshall in his official capacity, addresses a letter to the Attorney General of the United States relating to the work of the Federal Bureau of Investigations [
sic
] he might reasonably be expected
to be truthful as to the facts in the situation about which he complains.”
³

White didn’t fall for the bait. In a show of support for Marshall, he simply wrote a letter asking the FBI director to talk face-to-face with Marshall. Stubbornly, Hoover refused. “I note that you suggest that much good might come if Mr. Marshall and I … talked frankly with each other,” he responded. “I think that this would have indeed been the proper procedure … before Mr. Marshall resorted to gross misstatement and unfounded accusations against the Federal Bureau of Investigation and my administration of it.”

Despite his support of Marshall, White was very sensitive to the possible political fallout from a battle with Hoover. White continued to court the bureau’s leader because he knew the NAACP could not afford to be on Hoover’s hit list. In April, White even asked Hoover and Tom Clark to write messages of support for the NAACP. The letters were for a publicity drive to proclaim the group’s patriotism and allay charges that they held Communist and antigovernment sympathies. Both men responded with kind words. Hoover wrote: “Equality, freedom and tolerance are essential in a democratic government. The NAACP has done so much to preserve these principles and to perpetuate the desires of our founding fathers.”
⁴

Hoover’s good feelings with White continued through the summer of 1947 and hit a high point when he finally agreed to a private talk with Marshall in October. Hoover decided this was a good chance to size up the civil rights attorney, whom he had never met. Marshall had to go onto Hoover’s turf for the meeting, but he, too, wanted the chance to size up his opponent. The encounter was initially very polite, with coffee for Marshall and introductions to some of Hoover’s top aides, who sat in on the meeting. Through all the niceties, Hoover made it clear to Marshall that no sane person would want the FBI as an enemy. And he said the bureau would be glad to have Marshall as a friend.

Marshall had come to the meeting with instructions from White to go slow and not upset the NAACP’s tenuous peace with Hoover. When the director held out the prospect of an ongoing and personal relationship, it appealed to Marshall’s desire for respect and power. Marshall, in turn, won Hoover over with his charming, good-ol’-boy, “I’m a little ol’ Baltimore lawyer” persona, which worked so well with southern sheriffs and politicians. As Hoover opened up to Marshall, the NAACP lawyer suggested that the FBI could use the NAACP as an ally against charges
that the FBI was racist. But the FBI, he said, had to do a better job investigating racial attacks on black people. The meeting ended with smiles, handshakes, and promises to stay in touch.

The new relationship was evident a few months later when Hoover made handwritten notes on FBI case files involving a black man who had been badly beaten by whites in Washington, D. C. Marshall had written him about the incident, and Hoover wrote on the file that he wanted “very special attention paid to this case.” Hoover and Marshall seemed to have achieved a truce, if not peace, in their personal war.
⁵

A few months later, however, in July of 1948, D. M. Ladd, one of Hoover’s top aides, wrote the director that an angry Marshall had called a New York FBI agent to report finding a listening device in his office wall. Ladd told Hoover, “It should be noted that the Bureau does not have and has not had a microphone installed on the NAACP.” Hoover was immediately concerned with the potential for public relations damage. He knew that Marshall would be able to get lots of publicity if he claimed the FBI was bugging him.