Today, July 2nd marks the 100th anniversity of Thurgood Marshall birth. He was a leading activists in the 20th century, who forever changed the landscape of America; however he is the least well known of the three prominent black figures of the 20th century, behind Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. It was Thurgood Marshall, working through the courts to eradicate the legacy of slavery and destroying the racist segregation system of Jim Crow, who had an even more profound and lasting effect on race relations than either of Dr. King or Malcolm X.It was Marshall who ended legal segregation in the United States. He won Supreme Court victories breaking the color line in housing, transportation and voting, all of which overturned the 'Separate-but-Equal' apartheid of American life in the first half of the century. It was Marshall who won the most important legal case of the century, Brown v. Board of Education, ending the legal separation of black and white children in public schools. The success of the Brown case sparked the 1960's civil rights movement, led to the increased number of black high school and college graduates and the incredible rise of the black middle-class in both numbers and political power in the second half of the century.
Apppointed by President Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1964, Marshall became the first African American Supreme Court Justice. He worked on behalf of black Americans, but built a structure of individual rights that became the cornerstone of protections for all Americans. He succeeded in creating new protections under law for women, children, prisoners, and the homeless. Their greater claim to full citizenship in the republic over the last century can be directly traced to Marshall.
Still feisty in his old age. I remember a newscaster asking him what he was going to do now that he was retiring and he simply said "mind my business". Lucky for us he did not mind his business in his younger day.
