Thurgood Marshall: Civil Rights Activist

Thurgood Marshall was born on July 2,1908 in Baltimore, Maryland. His father, William Marshall worked as a waiter in an exclusive club. His mother, Norma worked as a kindergarten teacher. (Bio.) Marshall attended high school at Frederick Douglass High in Baltimore which at the time was called Baltimore’s Colored High and Training School he was. He graduated in 1925 and followed his brother William Aubrey Marshall to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. (Thurgood Marshall) At Lincoln many of Marshall’s classmates where important future Black leaders including Langston Hughes and the future President of Ghana Kwame Nkrumah. While there he met and married his wife Vivian “Buster” Burey. After Twenty-five years of marriage it sadly ended in 1955

Our human experiences are shown in many different ways, including through art. Kerry James Marshall was born in Birmingham, Alabama, 1955. The civil rights movement was in his hometown. He was a witness to Watts rebellion in 1965. His father was a postal worker who liked to buy fancy broken watches. Kerry’s father, after the bombing of the four girls, moved the family to Los Angeles. When Kerry went to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, he saw that there were no African-American artist, nor African-American paintings. Kerry thought that the story of these people should be told too.

His constant devotion to segregation cases and individual liberties for African Americans gave him the title as a hero. Juan Williams, a Panamanian-born American journalist and political analyst for Fox News Channel, believes that “of the three leading black liberators…[Marshall] had the biggest impact of American race relations” (Williams 1). Williams believed MArshall was able to make a permanent impact, changing the united states law. Through his time as a lawyer defending African AMerican Rights to serving as a Supreme Court justice ruling in favor of those rights, he did his time to better unify the country into a grey, rather than a black and white. Thurgood Marshall lead a great life, and his legacy will forever be remembered through the fact that a white student and a black student can be in the same classroom, as commonly seen as brushing one’s

When I joined the NAACP, I never could have imagined Thurgood Marshall, the head Special Counsel ("Thurgood Marshall"), would bring me into the biggest case of my career. In my times at Northeastern University Law School, I had written countless papers on the Supreme Court decisions preceding Brown v. Board of Education; and now I would be collaborating with the greatest attorneys the NAACP had to offer.

Thurgood Marshall’s education influenced his goals, actions and contributions; because of his education, he could pave a road to a successful law career. Thurgood Marshall’s principal made him memorize the entire U.S. Constitution as a form of punishment (“Thurgood Marshall”). His knowledge about the constitution made it possible for him to know about civil rights and led him to have an interest in becoming a constitutional lawyer. Marshall desegregated a movie theater at Lincoln University (“Thurgood Marshall: Justice”). This act of desegregation awakened his activism early on. At Lincoln, Marshall was able to maintain a high G.P.A. which allowed him to be accepted to Law school. Marshall was mentored by Charles H. Houston while in law school,

This movement redefines the idea of what it meant to be free in America. Faced with racial discrimination, social prejudice and poor services, the minority groups realized that they had to fight for their rights. Studies by McWhorter

My research topic is the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and I chose this topic because I always found it amusing that it took so long for African Americans to legally be allowed to vote. I also thought this topic was appropriate since we now have an African American president, and the African Americans citizens need to know that voting I important because we didn’t always have that right.

“The kidnapping and savage lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till” (Chandler) is a title in the news that would surely catch your attention. Racism has played a major role in American history. It still plays in society today, but not in as much of a big case. Having somebody kill a boy because will cause a lot of fighting between the whites and the blacks. In the end, somebody is going to come out on top. But that takes a lot of sacrifice. That all ties into this, the death of a boy that caused major support to the civil rights of African Americans. The death of Emmett Till has a lasting effect on the Jim Crow opposition, court trials, and the failure of racism in American culture today.

When it comes to research, knowing where to find the information can be very tricky. Finding scholarly, reliable sources can be very troublesome. Many people are not aware of just how accessible these sources are to them. Then once they do find the information they are looking for, they are unaware of how to properly use them. Within my Historical Research class, we had guest speaker, Nicole Arnold talk to us on how to efficiently find scholarly journal articles and bibliography. She walked us through ohiolink and other websites that would help us with our research.

In this scenario, saying that I were a sociologist designing a college course on Race and Ethnicity in college, I would have a variety of topics to start from and would really have to narrow it down. In this scenario, I am choosing to talk about systemic racism. The five sources I would use would be varying in subject, and the authors would come from different walks of life. {{{One book I would use in this course, would be a text that we have used this semester. This book being “Why Are All of the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?” by Beverly Tatum. It was a quick enough read, it made sense, and was easy to retain. This book had an emotional impact on me, and I have a feeling it would impact many students like the ones before

I enjoyed learning about how prominent segregation was during this time. President Carter told many stories about how his family acted toward African-Americans during this time. I particularly enjoyed a story he told about his mother helping struggling people. People would come to their back door and would offer their services in exchange food or something to drink. While many of her neighbors would say things like “‘Well, I’m thankful that they never come in my yard.’”, his mother, Lillian, still decided to help these people no matter who they were.

The resources I gathered for paper 3 are; Stride towards Freedom: The Montgomery Story by M.L. King and C. Carson, From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Struggle for Economic Justice by Thomas Jackson, and Martin L. King. I’m not quite sure how I’m going to use these resources for paper 3 because I haven’t decided what specific event I’m going to write about. But whatever event I choose I’m going to tie it back to these

The topic I choose is to compare and contrast two historical figures, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. The topics I will cover include their origins and background, their achievements, the public opinion about them and my personal opinion after reading all their accomplishments.

My understanding of primary sources and their importance to studying history is that without primary sources we wouldn’t know about firsthand events. There is so much to be learned from original accounts by historians. Yet the most dexterous person cannot duplicate the understandings that one can get from direct accounts. Primary sources are subconsciously shaped by the soul of the writer and the time period they were written. Every line in a historical document gives a hint of what time period the author lived in and makes an impression upon us in which several publications of second accounts can never produce the same effect.

Primary sources are more reliable than what someone is telling you what they heard. “Primary Source is the way to go. It goes back in history created by people who lived during that time period. Having access to the records of unrefined artistic, social, scientific and political understanding and accomplishment within the exact period supporting analysis.