Thurgood Marshall (70 page)

This new version of separate but equal creates dilemmas that, ironically, will also have to be resolved within the legal framework of individual rights set in place by Thurgood Marshall. His expansive view of the law as a tool of social engineering to help the disenfranchised requires that the government take steps to bridge the inequalities among its citizens. Insuring adequate funding for schools, expanding basic health care to include all Americans, and protecting the hungry and the homeless are issues that need to be addressed before America breaks down into a savage society with only rich and poor. Adequate protection for the poor has to come from extending the idea of individual rights to soften the harsh realities of economic inequity.

That framework of rights is Marshall’s legacy. He saw integration as the only possible way to ensure equality: It protected minorities and the poor from being isolated and left behind. Integration of racial groups and economic classes guarantees that everyone has an investment in the common good and a mutual concern about the nation’s future.

Segregation leads to an erosion of individual rights. Whether the segregation is done under Jim Crow laws or because people say they prefer to be with their own, it exacerbates inequities and creates a society where some people’s rights are more important than others (usually the poor and people of color). Protection of individual rights in an integrated society is the crux of Marshall’s legal design and is key to any blueprint for the future.

Marshall was right that full integration is a necessary precondition for assuring equal rights. How those rights are protected will be the civil rights story of the next century. It is evidence of his tremendous impact on America that the nation will be testing its most important principles against a standard he set in place.

If history is biography, then Marshall’s story is that of the architect of American race relations for the twentieth century. He was a revolutionary of grand vision who laid the foundation stone for race relations in his time and for generations beyond.

1
. Author’s interview with Louis Martin.

2
. Author’s interview with Nicholas Katzenbach.

3
. Author’s interview with Clifford Alexander.

4
.
Baltimore Sun
, June 13, 1967.

5
.
Baltimore Sun
, June 14, 1967.

6
. Thurgood Marshall interview with the Columbia Oral History Project.

7
. Ibid.

8
. Diary backup, June 13, 1967, LBJ Library.

9
. Thurgood Marshall interview with the Columbia Oral History Project.

10
.
Newsweek
, June 26, 1967.

11
. A. E. Cahlan,
Las Vegas Sun
, July 18, 1967.

12
.
Chicago Sun-Times
, June 16, 1967.

13
. Joseph Kraft in syndicated column, June 15, 1967.

1
. Isaiah O. B. Williams’s U.S. Navy pension records claim 28357; widow’s pension claim 14302.

2
. 1860 Maryland Census, Baltimore Census, Ward 11, p. 649.

3
. Death certificate, Feb. 6, 1948, Baltimore City Health Department, no. G59968.

4
. 1860 Maryland Census, Baltimore City, Ward 3, p. 790.

5
. Frederick Douglass,
Life and Times of Frederick Douglass
(New York: Collier Books, 1962).

6
.
Time
, Sept. 19, 1955. Note that in discussion with reporters, Marshall referred to this character as his great-grandfather. That story does not fit with documentation of the Marshall family and indeed seems closer to fable than to fact.

7
. 1880 Maryland Census, M4741, p. 13, indicates that recently emigrated German families were among those that made up the neighborhood around Isaiah’s home.

8
.
Time
, Sept. 19, 1955, p. 24.

9
. Logbook of the USS
Powhatan
, Aug. 20, 1867, National Archives.

10
. 1870 Maryland Census, HR M7241, p. 199, Isaiah Williams was listed as a baker. His 1872 marriage certificate, State of Maryland, National Archives, listed his occupation as grocer.

11
. Catherine Reef,
Buffalo Soldiers
(New York: Twenty-first Century Books, 1993), p. 27.

12
. Joseph C. Sides,
Fort Brown Historical
(San Antonio: Naylor Co., 1942), p. 141.

13
. Army of the United States Certificate of Disability for Discharge for Thorney G. Marshall, pension claim 368747.

14
. Records of Post Hospital, Fort Brown, Tex., Jan. 11, 1887, pension claim 368747.

15
. Certificate of Disability for Discharge for Thorney G. Marshall.

16
. Record of Marriage, Baltimore City Court of Common Pleas, liber AD 17, folio 116, Maryland State Archives CR 10, 288–2.

17
. Board of Health, Baltimore City, Office of Registrar of Vital Statistics, A14968.

18
. Margaret Callcott,
The Negro in Maryland Politics: 1870
–
1912
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1969), p. 95.

19
. Ibid., pp. 134–36.

20
. Foreword,
Blackletter Journal
(Harvard Univ.), Spring 1989, p. 3.

21
. Robert Jack,
History of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(Boston: Meador Publishing, 1943), p. 6.

22
. Roderick Ryon, “Old West Baltimore,”
Maryland Historical Magazine
, vol. 77, no. 1 (Spring 1982), p. 59.

1
. Ponchitta Pierce, “The Solicitor General,”
Ebony
, vol. 21, 1965, p. 68.

2
. Ibid., p. 67.

3
. According to the family friend Archer B. Owens, from ibid., p. 67.

4
. Arnold DeMille, “Thurgood Marshall,”
Chicago Defender
, May 8, 1954.

5
. Richard Kluger interview with Thurgood Marshall, Dec. 28, 1973, Brown Collection, Yale Univ.

6
. Board of Health, Baltimore City, Office of Registrar of Vital Statistics, A39924.

7
. Health Department, City of Baltimore, Certificate of Death, registered no. C81814. Note that his death certificate lists Thorney’s age as sixty-five, but other records indicate he was sixty-six years old.

8
. Ryon, “Old West Baltimore,” pp. 59–60.

9
. As cited in Garrett Powers, “Apartheid Baltimore Style: The Residential Segregation Ordinances of 1910–1913,”
Maryland Law Review
, vol. 42, no. 2 (1993), p. 295.

10
. David Bogen, “Race and the Law in Maryland,” p. 188.

11
. An amendment to the ordinance issued on Nov. 21, 1910, Baltimore City Council, 1st Branch Journal, 1910–11, pp. 397–401.

12
. “Fearless Williams in the News,”
B & O Magazine
, Sept. 1951, p. 39.

13
. Author’s interview with Douglas Turnbull, Jr.

14
. Ryon, “Old West Baltimore,” p. 57.

15
. Author’s interview with Enolia McMillan.

16
. Author’s interview with Agnes Patterson.

17
. Author’s interview with Julia Woodhouse Harden.

18
. Author’s interview with Carrie Jackson; DeMille, “Thurgood Marshall.”

19
. Author’s interviews with Ethel Williams, Pat Patterson, and Elizabeth [Penny] Monteiro.

20
. “Colored People’s Mass Meeting,”
Baltimore Sun
, Aug. 6, 1875, p. 1; “The Colored People’s Meeting …,”
Baltimore Sun
, Aug. 7, 1875, p. 2.

21
. “The Cake Walk Homicide,”
Baltimore Sun
, Nov. 25, 1875, p. 4.

22
. Accounts of this incident come from Arthur Waskow,
From Race Riot to Sit-In, 1919 and the 1960s
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966), pp. 21–27.

23
. 1920 Maryland Census, Enumerated District 240, sheet 4.

24
. Register of Baltimore, School Records of Norma A. Marshall.

25
. Mason A. Hawkins, “Frederick Douglass High School: A Seventeen Year Period Survey” (thesis, Univ. of Pennsylvania, 1933).

26
. Randolph C. Hinton to Thurgood Marshall, May 13, 1962, NAACP Files, Library of Congress.

27
. Author’s interview with Essie Hughes.

28
. Author’s interview with Charlotte Shervington.

29
. “The Law: The Tension of Change,”
Time
, Sept. 19, 1955, p. 26.

30
. It has been reported that Willie Marshall may have been one of the first blacks in Baltimore to serve on a jury. But court records offer no evidence that he did so. When asked if his father was ever a juror, Thurgood Marshall later said: “Not that I know of. As we say down South, I ‘disremember’—I’m sure it’s not true.”

31
.
Washington Star
, Aug. 28, 1958;
Newsweek
, June 26, 1967, p. 35.

32
. Author’s interview with Cab Calloway.

33
. Record of St. Katherine’s Episcopal Church, p. 152.

34
. Author’s interview with Teddy Stewart.

35
. Author’s interview with Elizabeth [Penny] Monteiro.

36
. Certificate of Recommendation, Frederick Douglass High School, Baltimore, Md., and Permanent Record Card, Colored High School, Baltimore, Md., for Marshall, Thurgood.

1
. Lincoln University to Norma Marshall, June 24, 1925, Archives of Lincoln Univ.

2
. Rev. W. W. Walker to William H. Johnson, June 13, 1925; William H. Johnson to Rev. W W Walker, June 17, 1925, Archives of Lincoln Univ.

3
.
Time
, Sept. 19, 1955, p. 24.

4
. Author’s interview with Franz Byrd.

5
. Ponchitta Pierce, “The Solicitor General,”
Ebony
, vol. 21, 1965, p. 69.

6
. Quotation from Arna Bontemps, as cited in Pierce, p. 67.

7
. Richard Kluger interview with Alfred Kelly, Dec. 28, 1971, Brown Collection, Yale Univ.

8
. Author’s interview with Monroe Dowling.

9
. Irwin Ross, in
Baltimore Afro-American Magazine
, Aug. 13, 1960, p. 1.

10
. Hughes as quoted in Pierce, p. 67.

11
. Langston Hughes, “Three Students Look at Lincoln,” Mar. 1929, Archives of Lincoln Univ., p. B.

12
. Irvin Ross,
Baltimore Afro-American
, Aug. 13, 1960, p. 4.

13
. Hughes, “Three Students Look,” p. 2.

14
. W.E.B. Du Bois, in
The Crisis
, 1929.

15
.
Afro-American Magazine
, Jan. 31, 1948, p. M-7.

16
. Ted Poston, “On Appeal to the Supreme Court,”
The Survey, Jan
. 1949.

17
. Pierce, “Solicitor General,” pp. 67–68; Arnold DeMille, “Thurgood Marshall,”
Chicago Defender
, May 8, 1954.

1
. “No, I never applied there,” Marshall told the author Richard Kluger in 1973, Brown Collection, Yale Univ. He reiterated it during my 1989 interview.

2
. Susanna McBee, “Advocate for U.S.,”
Life
, Nov. 12, 1965, pp. 57–60.

3
. Author’s interview with William Bryant.

4
. Charles Houston, “The Need for Negro Lawyers,”
Journal of Negro Education, Jan
. 1935.

5
. Oliver Allen, “Chief Counsel for Equality,”
Life
, June 13, 1955, p. 141.

6
. James Poling, “Thurgood Marshall and the Fourteenth Amendment,”
Collier
’s, Feb. 23, 1952.

7
. Author’s interview with Oliver Hill.

8
. Allen, “Chief Counsel,” p. 141.

9
.
Time
, Dec. 21, 1953, p. 19.

10
. Charles Houston to Walter White, Oct. 16, 1933, NAACP Papers, Library of Congress.

11
. Walter White,
A Man Called White
(Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1948), p. 154.

1
. Jo Ann E. Argersinger,
Toward a New Deal in Baltimore
(Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1988), p. 30.

2
. Irwin Ross, “Thurgood Marshall,”
Afro-American Magazine
, Aug. 20, 1960, p. 5.

3
. Author’s interview with Pat Patterson.

4
. Baltimore City Court, 1936,
Harvey Moses v. Doctor W. Aubrey Marshall
.

5
.
Annapolis Evening Capitol, July
13, 1934, p. 1.

6
. “Negroes Executed,”
Baltimore Sun
, Apr. 19, 1935.

7
. Thurgood Marshall to Lillie M. Jackson, Mar. 4, 1936, NAACP Papers, Library of Congress.

8
. Baltimore Criminal Court Docket, 1936,
State of Maryland v. Virtis Lucas
.

9
. Andor Skotnes, “The Black Freedom Movement and the Workers’ Movement in Baltimore, 1930–1939” (Ph.D. diss., Rutgers Univ., 1991), p. 325.

10
. Thurgood Marshall interview with the Columbia Oral History Project.

11
.
Baltimore Afro-American
, n.d., NAACP Papers, LC; Thurgood Marshall to Charles Houston, Dec. 18, 1934, NAACP Papers, LC.

12
. Linda Zeidman, “Sparrow’s Point, Dundalk, Highlandtown, Old West Baltimore: Home of Gold Dust and the Union Card,”
The Baltimore Book
(Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 1991), pp. 187–90.

13
. Jo Ann E. Argersinger,
Toward a New Deal in Baltimore
(Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1988), p. 156.

14
. David Bogen, “Black Lawyers in Maryland in the Forgotten Era,” p. 14.