Thurgood Marshall (30 page)

Despite the warning, Du Bois continued to support Wallace and was highly critical of Truman and his policies in the Third World. Writing to the NAACP’s board, Du Bois said Truman had opposed black liberation efforts to end white colonial rule in Africa. Du Bois’s battle with White became personal when Du Bois opposed the NAACP chief’s plan to take a leave of absence to become a member of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations.

Finally the board stepped in, forcing Du Bois out of the organization he had helped to found. He tried to rally allies among the membership for his right, as an individual, to support Wallace. But Marshall took an active part in killing any budding support for Du Bois. “I have been running around from post to pillar trying to hold things in line and I am convinced that the campaign against the Board for its action involving Du Bois is falling flat on its face,” Marshall wrote in a letter to White, who was by then at the U.N. “In other words, I think we have it under control and you need not worry about it until you get back.”
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Du Bois’s dismissal, however, had little to do with his support for Wallace, and everything to do with the fact that he was a Communist. In the midst of a nationwide anti-Communist frenzy, the NAACP was acting to protect itself from allegations that it sympathized with Communism. But Du Bois remained defiant. He told the NAACP board that he advocated many so-called Communist plans: “If you call that following the Communist line, I did it, I did follow the Communist line.”

Marshall had no second thoughts about having helped to push Du Bois out. With Du Bois gone and White on leave, Marshall and Roy Wilkins took charge. Wilkins became acting director of the association, and Marshall was his second in command for all affairs, allowing him to range far beyond legal issues. With control over every decision, Marshall and Wilkins decided to make the fight against Communist influences in the NAACP their hallmark.

Marshall went to great lengths to distance himself personally from
Communists. In 1949 he quit the National Lawyers Guild, where he had served on the board. Robert Silberstein, the group’s executive secretary, had been critical of a federal judge for putting several lawyers in jail for their aggressive defense of eleven Communist Party leaders in New York.

Marshall wrote to Silberstein that because the guild’s board had not been consulted before his protest letter was sent to the judge, he would quit the organization. With an eye on the fast winds of political attacks on Communists, Marshall wrote: “I cannot allow myself to be placed in such a position in the future and therefore I hereby tender my resignation as a member of the board of directors.”
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Marshall’s paranoia was not baseless. While he was divorcing himself from the guild and any other Communists, the FBI was increasing its spying on Marshall and the NAACP. The surveillance was conducted out of concern that the group could become an easy point of entry for Communists into the American political mainstream. The primary focus was on Communists who tried to gain influence by joining local branches, notably in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and New Orleans. Dan Byrd, the NAACP’s regional coordinator in the South, wrote in 1949 that left-wing activists were taking over some branches in his area. “It is of the utmost importance for appropriate action to be taken … to weed [Communists] out of our Jefferson Parish [La.] branch,” Byrd wrote. “I am convinced that the infiltration is almost complete.”
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At the NAACP’s next convention, held in Boston in 1950, Marshall and Wilkins spearheaded a resolution giving the national board authority to root out and “eradicate [Communist] infiltration” in the membership and leadership of local branches. The
Afro-American
’s front-page stories on the convention ran under the banner headline NAACP BOOTS REDS. Walter White, recently back from his leave of absence, issued a statement to reporters: “The communists brought it on themselves. We have always kept the door open. But they alienated and infuriated the members by their clumsy efforts to take over the NAACP.”
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On the last day of the convention, fighting began between the United States and Communists in North Korea. Soon after, the NAACP started getting letters from American soldiers filled with bitter complaints about continuing discrimination and unfair treatment in the military. President Truman had issued an executive order desegregating the military in 1948. Under Truman’s new rules, black and white servicemen were to be
fully integrated. But the Army’s hierarchy was particularly slow to begin implementation.

Marshall began to notice a large number of reports that black soldiers were being charged with cowardice and failure to obey orders on the battlefield. With black soldiers being disproportionately singled out, it became clear to him that something was not right. Thirty-six black soldiers who were convicted of various charges asked the NAACP to represent them at hearings to be held in Washington. As Marshall’s concern over the racial problem in Korea was growing, James Hicks, the
Afro-American
’s correspondent there, sent back firsthand accounts of black soldiers being wrongly accused and convicted on sham charges.

“Jimmy Hicks told me about these Negro prisoners, shackled, being brought into the railroad station in Tokyo, how horrible it was,” Marshall said later. “So I went to Walter and I told him about it. Walter then decided I could take it.” Marshall would later describe this investigation as “the most important mission of my career.”
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The first case that came to Marshall’s attention involved Lt. Leon A. Gilbert of the Twenty-fourth Infantry. Gilbert, a thirty-one-year-old veteran with ten years experience, was charged with disobeying an order to lead his men into battle just a month after the war started. Gilbert later called the order “sure death” because his unit was heavily outnumbered. Gilbert pleaded his innocence due to “lack of mental responsibility.” But he was found guilty and sentenced to die.

By November of 1950 Marshall had put his office in gear to handle the cases of black GIs such as Gilbert. Although Gilbert was convicted by a military court in Korea, his appeal was sent to a military court in Washington and Marshall acted as his legal counsel on the appeal. The sentence was reduced from death to twenty years upon the review board’s recommendation to President Truman. Marshall’s success generated headlines and more requests for help from black soldiers. Finally, he decided to go personally to the military’s Far East headquarters, to review more cases of court-martialed black soldiers.

On December 1, 1950, he applied for a passport to travel to the military command headquarters in Japan. He first phoned J. Edgar Hoover, with whom he maintained a fragile but still effective relationship. He hoped that the FBI director would want to help him get the military clearance, since Marshall had been at the forefront of efforts to stifle Communist activities in the NAACP. Hoover was out of the office, but Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the commander of U.S. troops in Korea, had
already been on the phone to the FBI. MacArthur had requested incriminating information on Marshall’s background, to give him a reason to deny Marshall permission to come to the Far East.

While Marshall was left waiting, FBI agents immediately responded to MacArthur. Their records from 1950 indicated that the forty-two-year-old attorney was a member of two groups cited as Communist fronts by the House Committee on Un-American Activities—the National Lawyers’ Guild and the International Juridical Association. The FBI report also noted that he “appeared on the same speakers’ platform with the Ohio State Chairman of the communist party.”
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This was just the ammunition that MacArthur needed. After receiving the FBI report, a military official in Washington called Marshall to say that MacArthur had refused permission for him to come to Tokyo. Walter White, meanwhile, began making frantic phone calls and sending telegrams, appealing the decision. White, Wilkins, and Marshall even appealed directly to the Truman White House. They struck gold. As Marshall recalled in a later interview: “The president said the hell with [MacArthur’s refusal]. Who’s running this damned show?” Under White House pressure, MacArthur relented and wired White that Marshall had his permission to come.

After several weeks in Tokyo, Marshall had interviewed thirty-four prisoners. He later wrote that he visited the imprisoned Lieutenant Gilbert half a dozen times. In his diary of the trip, Marshall said he regularly dined at the Press Club, listened to a “good” orchestra at the “Rainbow Room,” played the slots, and slowly made charts on all the cases, allowing him to see patterns of bias in how the trials were handled.
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Marshall did finally get a chance to meet with General MacArthur in Tokyo. Maj. Gen. George Hickman, on MacArthur’s staff, was in the meeting and recalled that MacArthur said he wanted all records and prisoners to be made available so that Marshall could be convinced that “there are not two systems of justice going on in the Far East Command.” After MacArthur and Marshall finished their talk, Hickman said, “it was suggested that he go to the Twenty-fourth, to the front lines. Mr. Marshall turned a little bit whiter than he was, but he said ‘Okay.’ ”
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The lawyer traveled to Seoul, Taegu, and Pusan—three large cities—before going to the battlefront. As he rode in a jeep to the front with his escort, Col. D. D. Martin, enemy shells began exploding around them. “All of a sudden they shot,
wwwhhhhhhsshh
, like that,” Marshall said. “And everybody ducked.” Colonel Martin, who was responsible for
Marshall’s safety, found himself lying in a ditch with Marshall nowhere in sight. Martin began screaming to his men, “Where is he? Where is he? Where’s Thurgood?” A loud voice bellowed out: “Underneath you! Goddammit, I don’t need no instructions on how to run!”

After several conversations with both blacks and whites on the front, Marshall found that black soldiers were in fact being disproportionately charged with violating orders. On the single charge of showing cowardice and disobeying orders in front of the enemy, for example, Marshall found thirty-two black soldiers but only two white soldiers had been sentenced for misbehavior in combat. Thirty of the thirty-two blacks got ten years or more in jail, while the two white soldiers were given sentences of five years or less.
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Marshall prepared a statistical report on the disparate treatment of black soldiers. He returned to Tokyo and presented the report to MacArthur, who was not impressed by the findings. While speaking to the general, Marshall mentioned that he had heard from Japanese officials that there was not a single black military man on the entire headquarters staff or MacArthur’s personal guard. The general responded that no blacks were qualified by battlefield performance to be in his personal guard. A stunned Marshall said, “Well, I just talked to a Negro yesterday, a sergeant who has killed more people with a rifle than anybody in history, and he’s not qualified?” MacArthur said no and expected that Marshall would back down.

But Marshall had taken a dislike to MacArthur. In that moment Marshall saw him as nothing more than a racist. Pointing toward the parade ground, Marshall said, “Now, General, remember yesterday you had that big beautiful band playing at the ceremony over there.” MacArthur, thinking the conversation had shifted, smiled, saying, “Yes, wasn’t that wonderful?”

Marshall’s eyes brightened as MacArthur fell into his trap. Marshall noted that there was not one black soldier in that band. “Now, General, just between you and me, goddammit, don’t you tell me that there is no Negro that can play a horn.” MacArthur’s face reddened, and he turned away before announcing that it was time for Marshall to leave. The NAACP lawyer later said MacArthur was as “biased as any person I’ve run across.”

When the attorney returned from his monthlong investigation, Walter White immediately sent him out on a speaking tour. White wanted to raise NAACP funds on the basis of the nationwide black outrage over the
indignities black soldiers were suffering in Korea. In gritty detail Marshall told about how Lieutenant Gilbert and others were being given “hasty” trials, which offered “the letter but not the substance of the law.”
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An editorial in the
Pittsburgh Courier
praised Marshall. “Being one of the ablest lawyers in the land, there was confidence that Attorney Marshall could help these men if anybody could,” the
Courier
wrote. “Mr. Marshall has become, in a way, the leader and symbol of this legal success which has had such a revolutionary impact on American life.”
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Two months after Marshall returned to the United States, MacArthur and Truman got in a row over U.S. military strategy, and the president fired him. Shortly after MacArthur’s departure the Army began to comply with Truman’s executive order to desegregate its personnel.

Marshall continued to work on one case from his Korea trip for several years. After he returned from the Far East, he wrote to President Truman asking that Lieutenant Gilbert’s sentence be reduced from twenty years to time already served. In 1955 Gilbert was released with a dishonorable discharge. He had served only five years of a sentence that originally called for his death.

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