Thurgood Marshall: Influential Leader Thurgood Marshall is the most influential person in history. His cultural impact, civil rights work, and exemplary leadership prove that he is more than worthy of the title. He grew up in Baltimore, Maryland. Family of grocers. Argued his dad a lot. Debate team. Marshall was a driving force for the push for civil rights in the civil rights era. He was a lawyer, a NAACP leader, and a Supreme Court Justice. He argued and won the most important case in history, Brown v. Board of Education. Thurgood Marshall paved the way for young African Americans so they could have the opportunity to become thriving lawyers and even become part of the Supreme Court. Marshall was an influence to all blacks, and …show more content…
When talking about racism Marshall explained his goal, ''that goal is that if a child, a Negro child, is born to a black mother in a state like Mississippi or any other state like that, born to the dumbest, poorest sharecropper, if by merely drawing its first breath in the democracy, there and without any more, he is born with the exact same rights as a similar child born to a white parent of the wealthiest person in the United States'' (nytimes). Marshall’s quote expresses African American’s stride for equality. His goal was to make sure that all races had the equal opportunity to succeed. Marshall was constantly fighting for racial fairness; he wanted to let the Nation know that the fight is not over ant that we must keep the dream alive. To reach his goal …show more content…
and Malcolm X as one of the greatest and most important figures of the American Civil Rights Movement. Marshall’s strategy of attacking radical inequality through the courts represented a third way of pursuing radical equality, more pragmatic than Dr. King’s soaring rhetoric and less polemical than Malcolm X’s strident separatism (biography.com). Marshall’s action in the court of law was more effective and helped out many when just sitting down and talking about the problems was not a feasible option. He was able to get work done on a legal scale that could not be done through separatism or peace. We make movies about Malcolm X, we get a holiday to honor Dr. King, but every day we live with the legacy of Thurgood Marshall (biography.com). Marshall fought for equality, without him arguing cases to gain racial equality schools like Jones College Prep would not exist. Brown v. Board of Education was a significant case that ended segregation in schools. The Court unanimously ruled that "separate but equal" public schools for blacks and whites were unconstitutional. The Brown case served as a catalyst for the modern civil rights movement, inspiring education reform everywhere and forming the legal means of challenging segregation in all areas of society. After Brown, the nation made great strides toward opening the doors of education to all students (civilrights.org). The Brown v. Board case was a stepping-stone