The most important case that characterized Thurgood Marshall as a jurist was Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. This was the case which ended the notion of, "separate but equal" facilities. Before Brown, Plessy v. Ferguson was the law of the land. In 1890, almost thirty years after the fourteenth amendment was ratified, the Louisiana government passed a bill stating, "that all railway companies carrying passengers in their coaches in this state shall provide equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races, by providing two or more passenger coaches for each passenger train, or by dividing the passenger coaches by a partition so as to secure separate accommodations." 14 Similar to Rosa Parks 63 years later, Plessy sat in the "whites only" section, and as a result he was arrested. Plessy lost his case, even though the fourteenth amendment supposedly should have protected him. By using a loose construction of the law, the courts were able to favor the state law. They favored it on the grounds that, "the Fourteenth Amendment can be applied neither to the discriminatory acts of private persons nor to state statues dealing with social activity, as long as the separate facilities are intrinsically 'equal'." 15 It was this proposition that Marshall and his colleagues had to overturn. The lawyers for the NAACP shepherded numerous cases in opposition to segregation through the lower courts in an effort to get the issue of "separate but equal" to the Supreme Court. By the time he tried Brown v. Board of Education, Thurgood Marshall had become a well known and well respected lawyer. He had tried and won eleven of the thirteen cases already tried before the Supreme Court. 16 Since he was not one to have things that he wanted said intertwined into a lengthy statement, he bluntly said, "to find that for some reason Negroes are inferior to all other human beings," is the only reason that segregation should be upheld. 17 To overturn the monumental case Plessy v. Ferguson would be a great step in the integration of schools, housing, and many other localities. The case Brown v. Board, was actually not just one case, it was a compilation of four cases, Belton v. Gebhart, Gebhart v. Belton, Briggs v. Elliott, and Brown v. Board. 18 The NAACP lawyers' basic argument was that segregation would have adverse effects on children of that age, because they are so young and that is when they learn the most. The lawyers said:
"It is at the elementary or primary education level that children along with their acquisition of facts and figures, integrate and formulate basic ideas and attitudes about the society in which they live. When these early attitudes are born and fashioned within a segregated educational framework, students of both the majority and minority groups are not only limited in a full and complete interchange of ideas and responses, but are confronted and influenced by value judgments, sanctioned by their society which establishes qualitative distinctions on the basis of race. Education cannot be separated from the social environment in which the child lives. He cannot attend separate schools and learn the meaning of equality. [Emphasis added]" 19They then proceeded to speak about the effects it would have on the Negro child in a segregated school system.
"Segregated education, particularly at the elementary level, where the emotional aspects of learning are inextricably tied up with the learning process itself, must and does have a definite and deleterious effect upon the Negro child. It is particularly true that when segregation exists at the elementary level it is hard to distinguish between fact and fiction-the fiction in this instance, being an arbitrary classification on the basis of race." 20In their conclusion, they spoke of how the Fourteenth Amendment required equality in treatment and "equal protection of the laws," which was being denied to them. The lawyers said :
"Since elementary education is absorbed during the formative years of a child's life, it assumes a peculiar and more important role than education at any other level.... Negro children cannot be afforded the opportunity to develop fully their intelligence and their mental capabilities if their training is circumscribed and their development stunted by state practices which, at the very outset of their search for education, places them at a disadvantage with children belonging to other racial groups." 21The above arguments provided solid evidence of the adverse effects segregation had, not only on white, but black children also. The lawyers spoke, and later proved the adverse effects of separation of the two races. Because of the extremely powerful arguments made by all of the lawyers, the Supreme Court agreed to hear their case. The lawyers for each side argued their cases for a total of three days in front of the Supreme Court Justices. On December 11, 1952, the allowed time for each lawyer came to an end and the justices dismissed them. It was not until June 1953, that the justices began deliberation. Due to numerous complications, they called Thurgood Marshall and his fellow NAACP lawyers, and his counterpart, John W. Davis and his fellow lawyers back to court on October 12, 1953 to restate, and reargue their points. The justices also provided numerous questions for the lawyers to answer before returning to court. After many problems, including the death of Chief Justice Vinson, who was considered by some to be the leading opponent on the nullification of school segregation, the rearguing of the case was moved back to December 7, 1953. This was very helpful to the NAACP lawyers, because it provided them with two more months in which they could prepare for the rearguing of the case. Finally on May 17, 1954 the Supreme Court justices announced their decision. It was a unanimous decision based on the fact that "the evidence presented was inconclusive with respect to the framers' intent toward segregated schools: 22
Reargument was largely devoted to the circumstances surrounding the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868....This discussion and our own investigation convinced us that, although these sources cast some light, it is not enough to resolve the problem with which we are faced. At best, they are inconclusive. The most avid proponents of the post-war Amendments undoubtedly intended them to remove all legal distinctions ....Their opponents, just as certainly, were antagonistic to both the letter and the spirit of the Amendments....What others in Congress and the state legislatures had in mind cannot be determined with any degree of certainty. 23
This was the most triumphant win for Marshall, and one of the most triumphant victories for blacks all over the country, and was one of the crowning events in Marshall's life as a jurist. By the early 60's, Marshall's path to the Supreme court was well on its way. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed Marshall to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Opposition from Southern senators delayed his appointment for a year. In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him to the position of U.S. solicitor general. Solicitor general is the position just below attorney general, which serves as the attorney general if a state does not have one. Here he won fourteen of the nineteen cases he argued for the government. Two years later, Johnson elevated Marshall from Solicitor General to the Supreme Court. 24
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Copyrighted
2001, United States
of America
Anita Gonzalez & Ian Granick