Thurgood Marshall: fighting for a moral society

Proceedings at handed before the annual meeting of the Association for the research of African American Life and History, Inc., September 29 2000 Washington, DC

This paper argues for the principles of Thurgood Marshall's aspiration for a moral society. The principles for a moral society require the nation to accept the historical and original reality that African Americans are as a great deal of a part of the heritage of America as whites because they fought and died in the American Revolution. This act allowed a tillage and heritage of a nation to garment for all. Thus, the tie that binds the nation is a public mission, one that assures justice for all beneath the promise of the Fourteenth Amendment.

a great deal of has been written about Thurgood Marshall. He was a genius. He was totally dedicated to the authority of law. One could ask, what if Marshall had applied his considerable talents to enterprises that brought upheaval to the world? What if Marshall was known not for advantageous but for evil. We are fortunate that Marshall's core values were directed to moral enterprises. We are fortunate that Marshall was more than a lawyer. He was a philosopher that understood the forces of history and importance of a just and moral society for which he fought (1)

For Marshall, to live in a moral society was to live in a society of freedom for all its citizens. Marshall believed in a independent society as a natural right, confirmed as democratic by dint of choice of a republican form of regulation cemented in the Constitution. He could not tolerate a promiscuous racist society. History and experience had taught Marshall that internal forms that insult individuals because of race, dashed human spirit, crippled imagination, lynched human muscle and fat denied the right to consecrated by a vow and allowed for unequal education was unwelcome direction (2)

Law and society must have appeared at not divisible by 2s to Marshall as he stepp into the hands of his teachers at Howard University place of education of Law in 1930. At the law gymnasium he realized that reliance upon history by the courts many times diminished the value of black clan based on tradition, the application of methodology and interpretation of history that to ofttimes relegated black people to opprobrious classifications. (3)

level when vigorous judicial dissents challenged decisions rejecting the applicability of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, respect to history and tradition appear to influence the decision. For example, in Plessy v Ferguson, decided in 1896 the lauded dissent through Justice John Marshall Harlan states that "[o]ur constitution is colorblind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In revere to civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the compeer of the most powerful. The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the agency of the supreme law of the land are involved. nevertheless Harlan's dissent made an interesting statement in history. The dissent implies that the domination of tribe of color could be a condition of permanency. In Justice Harlan's dissent he stated: "The white race supposes itself to be the dominate race in this political division And so it is, in prestige, in achievement, in education, in wealth and in power. with equal reason I doubt not, it will continue for all time, if it remains pure to its great heritage and grasps fast to the principles of constitutional liberty." (4)

Justice Brown writing for the majority of the Court in Plessy could easily have written the words quot above in the next to the first part of the Harlan dissent. Justice Brown did not believe that discrimination would be overmaster by legislation, that social prejudice would at any time be reversed by the law, on the contrary only by natural forces of choice. Justice Brown made clear, however, that should the black race rise in power and influence as it had during the Reconstruction era "and should enact a law in precisely similar terms" that would separate the races and empower clan of color, he assumed that the white race "would not acquiesce." (5)

Hence, the couple the majority and dissenting opinions of Justices Brown and Harlan assert that the power of the white society would remain veritable to it heritage. For Thurgood Marshall, the heir of Charles Hamilton Houston, the question for the two men was could white heritage dismiss the sacrifice of black nation who fought in the American Revolution? Could white heritage contradict to black citizens equal treatment beneath the law and economic influence shared through immigrants never in slavery?

Marshall and the lawyers who labor to overturn Plessy dedicated themselves to a moral mission to establish that they too had a vestureed heritage in America the same as whites. one as well as the other groups fought in the Revolutionary War to assured this nation. The moral question for whites was whether they could accept and share the moral claim of "heritage" with blacks upon an equal basis. Black race answered the question in the affirmative determined not to relinquished the claim of American heritage believing that it was not exclusive to whites. It might be said that Houston and Marshall and the Civil Rights motion was a moral effort to defend the rich heritage that Justice Harlan glance ated was within the dominion in the white population.