Thurgood Marshall led a civil rights revolution in the 20th century that forever changed the landscape of American society, first as founder and executive director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, then as a leading Supreme Court justice. On June 13, 1967, President Johnson nominated Marshall to the nation’s highest court, saying it was “the right thing to do, the right time to do it, the right man and the right place.” He was the 96th person to serve on the bench, and the first African American.
Today, July 2nd, would have been his 110th birthday. In light of the vacancy to occur with Justice Kennedy’s impending retirement, it’s important to look at Marshall’s legacy and impact on our country as court justice. Paul Gerwitz, one of Marshall’s former law clerks, wrote in a tribute, “…Thurgood Marshall had the capacity to imagine a radically different world, the imaginative capacity to believe that such a world was possible, the strength to sustain that image in the mind’s eye and the heart’s longing, and the courage and ability to make that imagined world real.”
“In recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings, we pay ourselves the highest tribute.”
With our court on the verge of becoming the most conservative bench in over 50 years, Jeffery Toobin of the New Yorker warns, “It will overrule Roe v. Wade, allowing states to ban abortions and to criminally prosecute any physicians and nurses who perform them. It will allow shopkeepers, restaurateurs, and hotel owners to refuse service to gay customers on religious grounds. It will guarantee that fewer African-American and Latino students attend élite universities. It will approve laws designed to hinder voting rights. It will sanction execution by grotesque means. It will invoke the Second Amendment to prohibit states from engaging in gun control, including the regulation of machine guns and bump stocks.”
Justice Marshall described himself as a “hell-raiser” in school, a circumstance that gave him exposure to the Constitution and lifelong respect for it: “Instead of making us copy out stuff on the blackboard after school when we misbehaved, our teacher sent us down into the basement to learn parts of the Constitution. I made my way through every paragraph.”
Let us be hell-raisers in our own lives. Let us “Build Together” a nation for all and not lose hope. Vote, march, call, write letters. Happy birthday and thank you for all your service to humanity, Justice Marshall.
Keep Families Together protest march 6/30/18
“I wish I could say that racism and prejudice were only distant memories. We must dissent from the indifference. We must dissent from the apathy. We must dissent from the fear, the hatred and the mistrust…. We must dissent because America can do better, because America has no choice but to do better.” Liberty Medal Acceptance speech 7/4/92
