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Racism in education
History of Racism
Thurgood marshall impact on civil rights
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More handpicked essays just for you.
Racism in education
History of Racism
Thurgood marshall impact on civil rights
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
John Marshall had a significant impact on strengthening the national government during his term as Chief Justice from 1800-1830. Marshall achieved this goal by strengthening the power of the Supreme Court in three main court cases. In Marbury v. Madison Marshall established the practice of judicial review, then in McCulloch v. Maryland he weakened the central government and Gibbons v. Ogden provided the federal government with the ability to regulate interstate commerce. Marbury v. Madison (1803) was a court case that began the practice of judicial review. This case started because the night before President John Adams term ended, he appointed 42 justices of the peace.
The predictions made by Justice Harlan were accurate, as he thoroughly predicted on what the ruling entailed. The ruling allowed for the ignorance of the amendments that protect the rights of colored citizens and allowed them to stay as citizens. In the Plessy v. Ferguson case, the ruling ended up impacting the country in the way he described with aggressions being stimulated. Colored people lost many of their rights that were granted upon the passing of the 14th and 15th amendments, and they were faced with violence and prejudice. A rift between the colored and white was created with colored being labeled as being inferior to whites.
Thurgood Marshall was born on July 2, 1908 in Baltimore, Maryland and died on January 24, 1993 in Bethesda, Maryland. He was a famous African-American lawyer who started working for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1933. While working for the NAACP for twenty-five years, he argued many important cases in front of the Supreme Court against discrimination of African-Americans. Some say Marshall helped to start the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. (Thurgood Marshall was an important figure during the civil rights era because he won the famous case, Brown v. Board of Education, ending racial segregation in public schools and he became the first African-American Supreme Court justice.)
"We must learn to live together as brothers, or we will parish as fools" (Martin Luther King Jr). That is what was said from one of the most experienced leaders, at during a very judgmental time. Martin Luther King Jr was just one of the many men that changed America. During this time, there was a lot of harassment towards blacks. They were not considered as an equal people.
As the quote reads above, we often only remember Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X and tend to forget about Thurgood Marshall who also and important figure of the civil rights movement as Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X were. Thurgood Marshall was the first black supreme court justice. Marshall was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1908. In his college years he went to the historically black Lincoln University. After, he applied at University of Maryland Law School but was denied because he was black.
Plessy vs. Ferguson, one of the bigger cases in the turning point for rights, gave the black community a big boost forward. There was a man named Homer Adoph Plessy that had a problem with the way things were going at the time and he wanted equal rights. But there was another man named John Ferguson who thought that everything was just skippy. They went to court to settle their quarrel.
For nearly a century, the United States was occupied by the racial segregation of black and white people. The constitutionality of this “separation of humans into racial or other ethnic groups in daily life” had not been decided until a deliberate provocation to the law was made. The goal of this test was to have a mulatto, someone of mixed blood, defy the segregated train car law and raise a dispute on the fairness of being categorized as colored or not. This test went down in history as Plessy v. Ferguson, a planned challenge to the law during a period ruled by Jim Crow laws and the idea of “separate but equal” without equality for African Americans. This challenge forced the Supreme Court to rule on the constitutionality of segregation, and in result of the case, caused the nation to have split opinions of support and
Thurgood Marshall was an eminent lawyer and civil rights advocate who was also the first African American to sit on the US Supreme Court. During the modern African American struggle, he devoted his life to opposing segregation and injustice in America. Midway through the 19th century, the modern African-American movement was a time of intense dedication to bringing forth equality in America. While the way people of color are treated has changed as a result of Marshall's efforts, the fight for civil rights is still ongoing, as can be seen by examining the contemporary African-American movement. Boycotts, sit-ins, and protests were just a few instances of the civil disobedience that defined the Modern African American Movement.
In the late 1930s, Marshall opened up a legal practice, to aid fellow African Americans in cases involving police brutality, segregation, discrimination and other racist violations of human rights. As his experience, knowledge, and influence grew in the civil rights, he began to influence civil rights and racial policy in the United States in increasingly impactful ways. In 1952, Thurgood Marshall won a landmark case: Brown V. Board of Education, which helped desegregate the American School system. After this, President Kennady appointed him to be the federal judge to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City, then, he was appointed to Solicitor General, then to Associate Supreme Court Justice by President Johnson.
Early in his life, he earned his degree in law at Howard University, where he met Charles Hamilton Houston, “Dean of the law school and a pioneer in the use of litigation as a mode of social reform” (History.com). Litigation, or taking legal action, was an important part of the Civil Rights Movement and the dean inspired Marshall to pursuit it. Then he practiced law in Baltimore, Maryland from 1933 to 1938, and was part of the counsel for the Baltimore branch of the NAACP. In 1935, he assailed the discrimination and segregation present in the University of Maryland, who denied him admission because of his race, then he became the director of the NAACP’s legal department and educational finances in 1939. Before that, “He had been admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the fourth, fifth, and eighth circuits, and the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana,” (Encyclopedia of World Biography).
Centuries ago, people weren’t treated equal. You were treated based on your skin color. If you were African American, you would be treated as if you were nobody. People looked at them with disgrace. African Americans got tired of the life they were living.
Supreme Court Decisions Setting Precedent Discrimination may not seen as big a problem today, but people had to fight for that problem, and court cases set precedents for today. The case of Plessy versus Ferguson and Brown versus Board of Education helped change the way we view discrimination today. The case of Plessy versus Ferguson decided that segregation was legal as long as everything was equal. But on the other hand, Brown versus Board of Education included separate but equal schools made African-American children feel inferior to the white children. 1896, Supreme Court heard the Plessy versus Ferguson case.
During Thurgood Marshall’s work in the Civil Rights Movement he said, “The goal of a true democracy such as ours, explained simply, is that any baby born in these United States… is endowed with the exact same rights as a child born to a Rockefeller,” (Adelman). During his work in the judicial system, first as a civil rights lawyer and then as a judge, Marshall strived to work towards a democracy focused on equality eventually becoming known as “Mr. Civil Rights,” (Archer). Although Marshall is primarily remembered for working towards African American rights as a Supreme Court Justice, Marshall strived for equal citizenship under the law for all people. Many of Marshalls ideas mentioned in his dissents stem from the lessons and ideas he learned early on from his parents and mentors during his childhood and college years. In his work in the Civil Rights
Justice Thurgood Marshall Response Justice Thurgood Marshall said in his “Reflections on the Bicentennial of the United States Constitution”, “I do not believe the meaning of the Constitution was forever ‘fixed’ at the Philadelphia Convention. Nor do I find the wisdom, foresight, and sense of justice exhibited by the framers particularly profound. To the contrary, the government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and momentous social transformation to attain the system of constitutional government and its respect for the individual freedoms and human rights, that we hold as fundamental as today” (Marshall). In this passage of his essay, Judge Marshall is critical of the government that is
The world we live in today would not be how it is if we didn't go through these three court cases. These court cases were about slavery and black rights, things we take for granted in today's society. Three different Supreme Court Cases influenced the Civil Rights Movement by declaring that under the Constitution, Dred Scott was his master's property, Segregation is universally recognized as within the competency of states in the exercise of their police powers, and Judicial enforcement of a racially restrictive property covenant is a violation of the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment. This first case is about Dred Scott, he had lived as a slave with his wife for a few years and then went into a free state as a slave. They sued their owner for their freedom, the odds weren't against them, many had won their freedom like this before.