Transcripts For CSPAN3 Thurgood Marshall As A Civil Rights Lawyer 20240713

Good evening. My name is deirdre cross, director of the Public Programs at the national africanamerican s aim of history and culture and it is my pleasure to welcome all of you to this Wonderful Program and introduce these speakers in our discussion entitled historically speaking, Thurgood Marshall, a life and American History, evening with spencer crew and paul think of it. Paul finkelman. For those streaming the tag ision, our twitter historically speaking. We are also thrilled that this program will be broadcast through cspan book tv to be aired at a later date. Begin this compelling new biography, we are introduced to the constant battles for inequality faced by africanamericans through a study of Thurgood Marshalls extraordinary courage and his belief in the power of the law to change society. Thurgood marshall, a life in American History follows his career from his youth in baltimore, maryland, to his days. T Supreme Court justice his inspiring story illustrates how pervasive racism is in American Society and also reveals the difficulty of the struggles of africanamericans to make progress against it. Through the lens of marshalls life, we learn the importance of perseverance and resilience. His narrative is one that finds its place among the many stories of the historic figures that you find in our galleries. A word about tonights speakers, spencer crew is serving as the interim director of the National Museum of African American his real culture. He also curated one of the museums inaugural exhibitions, entitled defending freedom, the finding freedom, the era of segregation, focusing on the civil rights struggles of the time, demonstrating how africanamericans not only survived the challenges set before them but crafted an Important Role for themselves in the nation. He has worked in public history institutions for more than 25 years and he served as the president of the National Underground Railroad Freedom center for six years and he worked at the smithsonian National Museum of american his for 20 years. Nine of those years he served as that museums director and that each of those institutions he has fought to make history the public through innovative and inclusive exhibitions and Public Programs. His most important exhibition groundbreaking field to factory africanamerican migration 1915 to 1940, generating a National Discussion about migration, race, and historical exhibitions. And i might add, for those of us that coming into the field 30 or we actually found a place for ourselves and museums across the country, the impact of this exhibition is so important and not to be forgotten in that aspect. He also curated the american presidency, glorious burden, remaining one of our most popular exhibitions. The National Underground Railroad Freedom center has attracted worldwide attention because of the quality of exhibitions and the focus on race, interracial cooperation, and issues of contemporary slavery. He has published extensively in the areas of africanamerican and public history as well. Blackhis publications are lives in secondary cities, a compared comparative analysis of the black lives of camden and elizabeth new jersey, 1860 to 1920. He coauthored the american burdenncy, a glorious comes out in 2000 two, reading from the slave narratives written of the same year. He is an active member of the academic and cultural communities serving on many boards that were to generate enthusiasm for history among the general public. He is the past chair of the National Council for history, education, and serves on the board of the National Trust for historic preservation, as well as the nominating board of the organization of american historians. Interviewing him this evening is dr. Paul finkelman, the oldest of the oldest independent institution of jewish learning in the United States. He has held a number of chairs as a tenured professor and visitor, including the chair of human rights law at the university of saskatchewan, the john Hoeven Franklin chair at duke law school, and the president William Mckinley distinguished professor at albany law school. In 2017 he had the fulbright chair in human rights and social justice at the University Ottawa johnl of law and was the lee merritt visiting professor at the university of Pittsburgh School of law. He is the author of more than 200 scholarly articles and of the editor of more than 50 books. His most recent, supreme injustice, was published by Harvard University press in 2018. Please join me in a warm welcome for dr. Spencer crew and dr. Paul finkelman. [applause] good evening, paul. Evening, spencer. We have and friends for a long time, im a little nervous. Its great to be here at in this amazing building with this amazing collection, here to educate all americans on parts of our past that most americans dont know enough about. Its an important place. I feel very fortunate to be here. What we are trying to do is talk about American History through the africanamerican lens. To understand how influential it is in the history of this country, the more that we do that, the better informed we think the public will be. I agree. With john hope franklin. My sense is that American History is the history of afro we have acans, while museum for african American History, this really is a museum of america. For those of you who have not gone through the museum, who are just here to hear us battle in public, you should come back to see the whole museum. Its really spectacular. Oneday. This for several days, but we keep coming back, we will be glad to have you. Holcombeadd that john was the head of this museums creation, making sure that we tell the unvarnished truth. That is what this museum tries to do, tell a truthful story, sometimes painful. Truth is the core of what we try to do, to make sure that people understand. Lets start with the truth about third of marshall. He passed a little bit more than a quarter of a century ago. There are probably significant numbers of people in the United States who know nothing about him other than that he was on the Supreme Court. And so i think that the first place to start is who was he . Short and quick story. Who is this man that we are here to talk about today . As you said, the memories most people have of marshall is that he was on the Supreme Court, the first africanamerican on the Supreme Court. Its an important benchmark in his life, but i think it is on the tail end of his real fame. The importance of marshall really stems from his work prior to that, when he was probably the leading civil rights of voice in this country throughout the 30s, 40s, 50s, into the 60s. I think that who marshall was was an architect of the change of the legal structure of this nation, to make it more in balance with the words and the principles of the declaration of independence. Its through his work in the courts where he began to change that. Rules are rules, to make them work the right way you can create a more balanced and better way of living for all americans, not just a few. I think he believes in equality, a person who believed in protecting the rights of the poor, the rights of people of color, the rights of those who have been mistreated by the nation because they dont have wealth or the kind of influence that they need. His work in that area really changes the nature of the nation and allows us to experience what we are able to experience today. How did he get there . Where does he come from . How come he has a weird first name . [laughter] , he grew up not far from here maryland. Thorough good was marshall, named after his grandfather. In six name in sixth grade he said he didnt like that name, too hard to pronounce, he started calling himself thurgood, which may be unusual but not any more unusual than thorough good. The unusual thing and getting that name from his grandparents ,s the history they passed down on both sides they were very active africanamerican community. They were agitators for change and fair treatment. They passed that down to him. Areaurred his work in the along with his mother and father , who demanded at the dinner , they demanded their children tell the truth, saying that if they were going to have an idea, they had to have read the papers, they had to know the information and they had to put together a cogent rationale for what they were talking about. Marshall claims that he was being trained to be a lawyer before he knew he was going to be a lawyer because of the way is father and mother made him think about the world they lived in and how to talk about it in a clear way. That idea how to navigate the world from his ancestors, his grandparents and parents on both sides, was critical in creating the man who becomes the lawyer for the naacp. Philadelphia, marshall has a connection . He does. Lincoln university again, greater philadelphia. Ok. [laughter] its close. Like a hometown club. Like university of marylands greater washington, d. C. . I guess that sort of true. Is thatconnection lincoln has a group of friends and they enjoy playing cards, they enjoy each Others Company and going into philadelphia on the weekends to see the town. Go to the churches where they thought the prettiest girls were. Intoe of his ventures the woman who becomes his wife, he claims he didnt meet her until several years later, but she claims she actually met him at an event at a party and he was so busy heking to everyone else, didnt notice her, but she noticed him and decided he was someone she wanted to get to know better. A connection to philadelphia. Thats important, you know . As wc fields said, id rather be in philadelphia. So, he wants to go to law school, hes a citizen of maryland. Does he go to the university of Maryland Law School . He wants to, but they had stopped accepting africanamerican students there in the late 19th century. He decides to apply and understands it might be difficult but applies anyway and gets the standard letter back, they dont allow africanamericans to go to the school and that there are other wonderful schools you might want to try and we might provide you with money to go somewhere else in the state. He cant afford to do that, doesnt want to not go to maryland and winds up actually having to go to Howard University instead. Whats interesting about that is when he first goes to howard, the reputation is that strong. It was only a night school law school, which meant that it was that for individuals who had to work turned, they could go to law school at night to become lawyers. But the standards were not very high, the demands were not very high, he sort of reluctantly becauseto go to howard he could go there at night and work turn today. What happens after he gets there, they brought on board a new dean of the law school. Charles hamilton houston. Houston has decided that he is hired to buffer and build up the law school at howard and decides that what he needs to do is to change the way it operates. The biggest change that he makes is to change it from a night school to a day school. They mightgine how have decided to do that. Even though it was a night school, highly regarded, it provided a pathway to a different life for a number of different individuals in washington, d. C. , who worked at night and became lawyers. In fact, his father got his law degree that way. Deciding to change it from a night school to a day school, a fulltime law school, he was actually going against what has been a pathway of his father to his law profession. But his belief was that he needed to make howard a much stronger place. It has to be a place that became the premier place to educate africanamerican lawyers. He had a vision for the future, which was that he wanted to create lawyers that would look laws, he called them social engineers, the tactic being to change the nature of the environment in which africanamericans had to live. Making it a more equitable place for people to live. Going to law school, while marshall was at first not happy about the choice, turns out to be one of those moments in time where you think it is not going well but it turns out to be the best choice that you make. Used in his famous for having said to all of his students that if a lawyer is not a social engineer, he is a parasite. Absolutely. We know what a parasite is. Whats a social engineer . Is a lawyergineer who dedicates his career to changing society, to reengineering society. The laws were there, put there by the constitution and other laws that existed, but they needed to be forced to be applied in an equitable kind of way. The lawyers that he trained at howard had the task of taking their law degree, not using it to make a living for themselves, but as a tool to begin to change the nature of that society. To look at the laws, to use them to have applied equally and make sure that in the long run Society Changes in a way that African Americans and others who find themselves on the short side of the law are actually able to use and be citizens by the full definition of the word. For him it was about reengineering the society to be more equitable. For a moment lets go back to the early 1930s, when Young Thurgood marshall is in law school. There are many people here who probably understand what the conditions in the United States were like work africanamericans in the 1930s. There are also people who only know it as a fake history because they havent gone to the museum yet. What is the world that Thurgood Marshall is going into . Thats the centerpiece of what to life will be like, completely dismantle that world and turn it upside down. , wenderstand what he does have to understand what he is obligated to do. As i said, marshall is raised in baltimore, maryland. To give you a sense of it, there is a study done at the time in which they look at segregation throughout the nation and they decided the most segregated town in the countrys baltimore. First of all, you get a sense of how strong the laws were to segregate the races in baltimore. He grows up in a segregated society, one in which africanamericans were not allowed to go to the downtown stores, not allowed to get jobs in the stores. They can only at housing in certain parts of the city. To prevent place certain groups from living in certain parts of the city. There were areas like this created in baltimore. You really are in a place where pushedamericans are towards the bottom part of the society, emblematic of what its like in hearts of the south and the north, in terms of the opportunities to get jobs being limited, the opportunities to go to schools being limited. Separate but equal meant separate but unequal in terms of what was provided terms of schools and facilities, in terms of places they could go to visit where they had to sit in theaters. A world in which the structure to prevent africanamericans from experiencing their full rights of citizenship. That is the world that marshall is boarded to. A world that his parents and grandparents and others around him are fighting against and the world hes looking to change is a social engineer. Ok, you have a world where literally africanamericans are segregated from when they were born in an allblack hospital and buried in an allblack cemetery. Everything in between his segregated. Right. Law in 17 states. Its by custom in some other states. The customs vary from state to state. The laws are very harsh. Some of the states, one reads the laws and you get the impression that state legislators spend weeks trying to find something new to segregate. At one point the Florida Legislature says that at the end of the school year, books from black schools must go to one place and the books from white schools must go to the other. Maybe they thought that these books would date over the summer if they were in the same warehouse. In some places if you want to court there was a black bible and a white bible. Where there were places the tax rolls, above for black taxpayers, enabled for white taxpayers. Its almost a constant contest, what else can we segregate . In this world, this gigantic ,orld of racism everywhere where does marshall see the crack in the wall . Method ofe see a breaking through this gigantic wall of segregation which is everywhere . Think there is two pathways. First of all, i think he believes that through the law you can create change. Part of what he is trying to do shift the wayhink that the courts are interpreting the law in ways that might be more equitable, that might be more fair in treatment. What they also do is that he and others in the naacp crafted interesting approach to tagging segregation. Its important for Supreme Court cases, like plessy versus 1896. I always get that mixed up with Frederick Douglas and his death. 95. In a sense, the end of one age, plessy versus ferguson the beginning of the next stage. What plessy versus ferguson is say separate but legal, remaining in application, separate but unequal becoming the norm. Is gohey decide to do back to the original court ruling that says separate but equal is legal. But they decide to do is launch an attack to make it in fact separate and equal. It wherever you have these different kinds of settings and schools for africanamericans and flight children, if the facilities are not well, the idea is to force them to live up to the law to make them equal. The other current is they think it will be so expensive to create two equal systems that it will force the powers that the to decide it is too expensive and bring them together. The hope is that by forcing things to actually be separate but equal according to the law, they will create a crack at the ,ystem of separate but unequal making desegregation financial financially logical for those places. What were the in the strategy . They start at first in the law schools, starting high. If they start in Elementary School they decide they will drive the people crazy and they will never get to the advocates who create a resistance, so they decide to start with the professional schools and they start with a case in missouri with a guy by the name of gains, who applies the law school and makes the separate but unequal argument, that its unfair. To get the ruling over a couple of years at several points, he and the meantime goes off to school in michigan. When they finally get the ruling that they want, he has disappeared and they cant figure out what happened to him. We never do figure out what happened to him. There are all sorts of theories. He never camet back from the drugstore. Others think that he was murdered. Something he was paid off. Others decided thought you didnt want to put up with this any longer. The problem is that they have gone through so many steps to get the ruling in their favor, when he disappears that dont have someone to follow up, meaning they have to start the case all over again. There was a case in oklahoma, but as we spoke earlier the most important case was in texas, where they get a man who votes for the man who works for the post office who agrees to go for the process of applying to the law school in texas. Texas comes up with a number of steps on the way. A place where they can quickly assemble the library, their books, a teacher or two saying that now we have a lawsuit that is separate equal. Instead they say he is not equal, that you dont get the same kind of benefits and connections, the same life as a lawyer. The separate school should go to the university of texas. They continue to litigate until they finally win the case, in which the Supreme Court argues that the separate school does not give you the same wash as as, the same lawyer, where you have the most important people come in, teachers and alumni, creating networks for you to become successful. They say that you cant do that in a separate school. Its a rule against texas. It creates the important crack idearms of the push to the that separate but equal had to be separate and equal. This creates a lot of panic and a lot of schools. The side note to that is that when this is successful in oklahoma, it not just in the law school where it happened. It was the school of education and other places. The next big step is that the student is excepted i think in oklahoma and he decides he wants to live on campus. Now they have got to figure out where hes going to a. He says he has a piece of paper that says he has a dorm room. They have to figure out what to do with that and others to the same thing. Now they have to figure out where they are going to put all the students. On top of all of this they wanted people to participate in the social life, the Football Games of the schools, creating more turmoil. I think that undermined the idea that others had, that it would crack once it was clear that people would have access to creating, creating a movement in that direction that was going to break apart the whole idea of separate but equal, showing that impact people can operate and live together and it wont cause a tremor in society along the way. The texas case i think, thats an important first step in attacking the idea of separate but equal, so that what can follow can be people beginning to actually mixed together and find it is not so terrible. There is a story that when marshall was litigating a texas case, texas senate they were going to start a separate law school for black. Marshall said fine, we have someone who once the study petroleum engineering. Are you going to spend the money to create a college for africanamericans . They went to graduate schools, then they attacked the public schools. Im sure that everyone here knows the outcome, brown the board, where the Supreme Court unanimously holds separate but equal schools and hermie unequal. They can never be equal. It makes marshall in my view the central figure of civil rights for the 20th century. There isout marshall no montgomery bus boycott. Because the montgomery bus thistt is coming off of huge victory in brown, where the Supreme Court has essentially segregation is not constitutional. In Brown Mccourt says that it doesnt apply to Everything Else , that everything, everyone with half a brain knows that this is the beginning of the end. So, in that context there are some africanamerican who are uncomfortable with this. Saying that you are destroying the world. We would be better off. Above the Southern States are saying that we are going to raise teacher salaries and willed Better Schools, making the separate schools equal. Some africanamericans are arguing that it would be better for the children right now to go to a Better School of to litigate and fight and face trauma for a decade or more to get them into an integrated school. Some districts in virginia simply shut down. Haveg they dont have to public schools, if we have to integrate we will simply close them down. In otherthing occurs fields. Jackie robinson is a great hero of america, but Jackie Robinson leads to the end of a very viable africanamerican business known as the negro leagues. Once baseball is integrated, you dont need these separate leagues. We are about out of time, our moderator is waving at us silently, time for questionandanswer. One last question, if we could bring back third of marshall and mr. Marshall, mr. Justice marshall, because i think you say that being a Supreme Court justice was the crown on his was in but his career the trenches if we could bring him back today and we asked him, was it the right tactic, was integration the way to go . Or should we have fought to force all of these bigoted white southern rednecks, the Strom Thurmonds of the world, to actually make everything equal, would it have been better if they had done that and they were forced to spend millions and millions and then billions on dating the quality and they had eventually come to the conclusion themselves that they had to, rather than fighting it out and waiting it at the costs of cases like Prince Edward , kids not being able to go to school at all . Have beenl would unflinching in the support of what he did. He had a number of arguments in texas about that very thing really legislature offered to create a separate black law school buff it up and marshall suggested you wouldnt get the same quality as other people had. His belief was that until you force these students to be in the same places, you werent going to get similar kinds of funding, similar kinds of resources to go to those schools. So even though you might get Better Schools than you had before, better facilities than before, they still wouldnt be up to par to the ones other students had access. He was a Firm Believer, as was houston, that once you put those students together, then you cannot separate other resources. And would force to get an equal education or otherwise you gain partially equal but not the same thing. He was adamant about that from the very start to the very beginning and even today still believe that was the way to go and the world were in now would not have happened as quickly had you followed another pathway. You might have had a number of separate schools, maybe Better Schools but still wouldnt have the same quality of resources. We can see in Society Today that we still see the resources to poor areas, to areas of color dont get the same resources because you can separate them out and find other devices to get resources secretly. Places so i think marshall would have varied at all or had any regrets about the pathway that he followed. He was a Firm Believer in desegregation. I think we are now going to open it up to the audience. Are there people with microphones somewhere . In the back. Wed like you to use the microphones so your question gets heard for our online community. Right here. Am i on . My question is for mr. Finkelman. Is jim crow a Southern Institution . Ok. So the jim crow, of course, began as a singing and dancing figure in the period before the civil war. Thats where jim crow came from. Of course jim crow comes to stand for segregation. And the answer is that in most of the United States, at some point there are some elements of segregation so that some places its done by law, some places its done by custom. I for once was doing research on the history of civil rights in detroit and i came across a manual published by the real state brokers of michigan, explaining how you steer people to the right neighborhood for them. And by the way, it wasnt merely black and white so there was a whole section on where you send jews so they wont live in neighborhoods where White Christians dont want them and then there were discussions about how if you have a black client, you need to steer them to the right neighborhood where they belong. And so this was not legal and it was not of statute, it was simply a institution created by an entire profession. He had that across the board. On the other land, we were talking before about the first School Desegregation case to win takes place in iowa in 1868 when an africanamerican man in iowa named Alexander Clark sues the school board because the school board wont let his daughter go to the high school and there isnt a high school for blacks and the i would because Supreme Court says that under iowa law, everybody is entitled to an education and you cannot discriminate and the iowa Supreme Court says if you allow segregated schools for blacks, then youll have to set up schools for catholics or for jews or germans or for french people, and basically the court mocks the whole idea of discrimination for anybody. So in the north you have this wide range, ill give you one kind of example. In 1875, Congress Passes a important law known as the Civil Rights Act of 1875 which provides for public accommodations for all people, says you cant discriminate in hotels, in restaurants, on trains, on streetcars, in theaters, in places where people gather in the public. The Supreme Court strikes that down in 1883 and says its unconstitutional. You cant make the hotels in new york open their doors to blacks. Im going to slow it down because of class. Im going to end right now very quickly. The next 25 years in the next 25 years, virtually every northern and Western State passes their own Civil Rights Act making such discrimination illegal. They dont always enforce it, as we know. But they make it illegal. So on one level, yes, segregation is found in the north, but compared to the south, its a completely different world. The reality is blacks hold public office, in the north they go to the state universities in the north and they face discrimination, they face racism. But in the south they are completely cut out of public life. Remember, until the 1930s, 90 of all africanamericans live in the former 15 slave states plus washington, d. C. , which is also a segregated city. The segregation is affecting the vast majority of africanamericans. But its a class. Ill stop. Should never let a College Professor the United States right now is on the precipice of being in the majorityminority country. My question is, do you believe in the current Political Climate that brown versus board of education would pass the current Supreme Court . Lets say im not optimistic. Im always hopeful but not optimistic that this court would find for that. Because the question is would a civil rights law Pass Congress now and im not sure that would happen either. I think were in a different time and we hope to pass through it and get to a better ime but these are dicey times. Hey, good evening. My question is this, knowing Thurgood Marshalls history and of course about the historymythry of the disappearance of lloyd gains, i guess the question is about if he was here, what would you ask him . And im going to have to rely on you two for this. Do you believe if he could do it again, what would he do differently because he was so close to breaking things wide open with lloyd gains but of course leaves the hotel and disappears and we cant find him in the history books anymore. I think what marshall himself said is the disappointment in that he couldnt find someone to stay the course and had the wherewithal to really hang in there. And when he does the case in oklahoma, the thing he says is shes a strong person and determined and shell stay the course and not drop by the wayside because its taking so long. I think the other thing is that lloyd gains had quite an ego and even sweet met him at michigan and was not impressed by lloyd gains because he began to read his headlines and began to see himself as important and wanted some special treatment and what made marshall Going Forward was to be more careful in the quality and character of the people they brought forward to have these cases to make sure that they had the character and with wherewithal but that they had the right credentials in the sense that there werent issues in their background, issues in how they presented themselves that might be used as an excuse not to be allowed into these schools. So the lesson you learned was to carefullyly select individuals you want to stand for your test cases. If i could add one more thing to that. In cases involving social change, sometimes an organization can choose its client, can choose its plaintiff. So in the montgomery bus case, rosa parks is not some random person. Rosa parks is the sect of the naacp in montgomery, she knows exactly what shes doing and shes doing it because shes the right person to do it. On the other hand someone simply comes along and finds themselves in the situation and i think in some cases lloyd gains was like that. One funny story about niemann sweat, hes a postal delivery person. Hes not a wealthy person at all. Hes aplaying for the university of Texas Law School and in the process he gets invited up to austin and ushered into the main rich persons white hotel and he walks in the front door which black people arent supposed to do and immediately the bellman takes him to the elevator which hes not supposed to get in to and hes taken up to a suite where hes not supposed to go and in the suite are a number of very, very wealthy texas businessmen with literally a bag of cash and they offer him this bag of cash if he will withdraw his case and he walks away. He later suffers tremendous medical problems because of the nerves and the stress of this but hes one tough man who is willing to stick it out. And thats what i think youre talking about. Sweat is vetted before he goes forward. Gains was not. Or its possible gains was murdered. We dont know what happened to him. But there is a recent book by the university of Missouri Press on gains but its ambiguous to what happened to him. Sweat is actually they have to do a lot of searching to find someone to step forward in texas as welltodo that. Good character has to be there in different kinds of ways, not only the toughness to stay away from bribery but your toughness understanding whats ahead of you and what you might give up along the way. So what we so often dont think about is the toll those individuals play over the long haul in terms of what happens to them in their lives. And what we didnt talk about ill mention real quickly is what we dont realize about marshall is how much he put himself in danger to be a civil rights lawyer in the south, that he almost found himself lynched in one instance, save only because his friends roont leave him. He would go to town and as soon as he would get to town the local residents would put him in a car and take him from house to house each night so local officials wouldnt know where he was. So this entire process of social engineering also called for a great deal of personal courage along the way. Thats one of the things we dont remember about marshall because we think of him as a Supreme Court justice. The title mr. Civil rights was a title he had up through the 19 50s because of what he stood for and the changes he brought with him. We dont often i think recognize that or understand that about him or more importantly about the people in those locations who decide to step forward and defy the local law because he said, i would come in, try these cases, win them, lose them, go home. They had to stay there and live through that which followed to stand up against the local people who did a variety of really unimaginable things, to punish them for having the nerve to stand up against local custom. That character runs throughout these individuals who are involved in these processes. Theres also an odd flip side to this in that in many of these cases when you read the stories in spencers book, which is really a very good book, youll learn a lot, one of the things that comes out is that the University Administrators who are required to segregate do so in ways that undermine their own case. So for example when sweat applies for the university of Texas Law School, the dean of the law school doesnt say youre unqualified. He says we would admit you but you are a negro is the word it was at the time. When adasipial applying to the law school, you would make a fine candidate but for the fact youre the wrong color. So that when you go into court and make the argument she should be let in or he should be let in, you have essentially the dean saying yes,. There are also remarkable examples of students in lahoma and texas who protest segregation. So in one case a man named mclaren who is in his 196 in hits 60s and getting a doctorate in education is told he must set at a separate table in the cafeteria. At the library. And white students simply come and join him, sort of daring the administration to arrest him. That is also part of the story. But what spencer has not talked about is the way marshall also goes into the south and defends people charged with crimes and hes putting his life at risk every time he does it. The fact that marshall is never lynched is in some ways remarkable because he could have faced that many times. One more question. My father was a great admirer of Thurgood Marshall. I still remember the conversation at dinner the day he was confirmed to the Supreme Court. And i think there probably are some younger people who perhaps dont know cases, significant cases he wrote decisions for. I just know the book focuses more on his civil rights career and there was maybe a decision or two we can discuss that he weighed in on. I can give one. I think hes probably better with it at the law part of it. What i loved about marshall was the early part of it. For me his Supreme Court years were significant but not the most significant part about him. And i was just trying to think about there are a couple cases, what he was in terms of his strength and his focus was he was against the Death Penalty consistently. He believed in the rights of the poor to be treated fairly the courts, the rights of defendants, people arrested by the police to be given their rights rather than to be harassed into confessions. While his solicitor general he argued against the miranda case where the police asked to offer their point of view but while on the court was a supporter going throughout that. What i think about is the kind of stream of things that were important to him and what he stood for and why his early days in the court, i think he found very, very uplifting. But the latter years he was in the court felt very unhappy because he could see a conservative strain coming into place, where they were more interested in protecting the rights of Law Enforcement individuals rather than the rights of the people. So he found himself called the loyal opposition in which he would write more dissents against the rulings of the main courts than supporting of them. A couple cases that come to mind is the case in richmond, virginia where they are decreing and the city of richmond says they have been biased against minority firms for years and they didnt decree a contract you have to have a minority firm as part of their working group and there was a group that gets a contract and doesnt do that and they take away the contract. They go to court and the Supreme Court finally rules that in fact that company doesnt have to do that. That they havent made a Strong Enough case for why they can still require people to have minority contracts with it and marshall write as very strong dissent about that which he cannot believe that after years and years of discrimination the court is saying theres not enough of a record to show or to justify why richmond is not listening to their laws. I dont know the cases by name but know what he stands for in spirit and what are the important aspects of his work. And i think what resonated from your father was marshalls stalwarts stand of the mistreatment of those who cant defend themselves easily enough. Let me give you one example, marshall dissents in rodriguez versus San Antonio School district. This is a case brought by mexican americans living in san antonio where you have five separate School Districts within the city and county and actually within the city. And the five separate School Districts have completely different funding ratios. And in the poorest school district, the people actually pay the highest tax rate but because of the Property Values are so low and people are so poor they produce the lowest revenue. And the Supreme Court rules that economic status and the amount of tax dollars raised for the schools is not something that the constitution requires to create equality. So as long as the schools are integrated on race, it doesnt matter whether the poor people get crummy schools and rich people get Great Schools and marshall writes a stinging dissent because marshall understands that while race has been the central issue of American History and by the way, this is me talking as well as marshall, that race has been the central issue of American History since the first year the first native americans were counted, that in our own world the economics and poverty are as equally important in terms of creating equality. And thats what marshall stands for on the court all the time. And for that hes a great justice. But hes much greater as mr. Civil rights. The court ruled in that case good education is not a right. Yeah. And thats what drives marshall crazy among other things is that fair treatment is not a right. Good evening and thank so you very much for this discussion. Im a native texan and a graduate of the university of Texas Law School. In the early 1980s, which felt like it wasnt that much time since mr. Sweat entered, we kind of saw and heard a lot about the deplorable conditions that he suffered when he was a student and much of that was actually still there when i was there. My question is this, given justice marshalls thoughts about integration as opposed to segregation and separate but equal, what advice would he give in todays environment as we witness a lot of the affinity groups, both, you know, in our work conditions and in the community where people are purposefully segregating themselves out, racebased, membership only of that particular group and what advice would he give about the wisdom of doing that in todays environment . A parallel i can give you to think about is that as stokely, carmichael and black power came to the forefront and the idea of black power and black situation, marshall was firmly against it. He didnt bleeven that thats the way to go. He almost said thats like being a white southerner pushing for segregation. That went against all the things he believed in, all the things he thought was important because by segregating yourself, once again, he would feel you left yourself vulnerable and that it became gain an easier pathway to give your resources, fewer support. And for him and houston the connection is what made for equality of resources, and i think when you look at him closely, i think desegregation might have been a better word than integration in the sense that i think he liked everyone but he didnt believe that one was better than the other but knew the pairing together was what made equality of resources work and that was the core of what he wanted to have happen. How do we make sure that all our children have access to equal education and similar resources . So for them the way you do that is it you bind them together, you cant then separate those streams of resources. I think he might also remind us that in addition to desegregation cases and integration cases and criminal cases that marshall and the naacp that he worked for and when he left was led by his assistant for many years, jack greenberg, that the naacp was constantly fighting for Voting Rights and that Voting Rights marshall is a patriot. Marshall is a if you wanted to have sort of a picture of a true somebody who truly believes in american ideals, it would have been Thurgood Marshall and marshall would have told you, if youre concerned about these things, how many people have you registered to vote today because people died for the right to register to vote. Marshall and other lawyers risked their lives for the right to register the vote. And i think he would answer that part of his legacy has to be people taking advantage of the victories that he led and not sort of sitting back and saying ok, now we have it and we dont have to keep fighting. I think that would be part of his argument. In fact what he said was while brown versus board of education was an important case, he often argued the most important case he had was the texas primary case where they were able to break the back of texas using the white primary with a way of excluding africanamericans of voting and yet opened it up so africanamericans had the vote. And said one of the most important cases he prosecuted because the voting does provide a platform and springboard for other changes that can follow. I agree entirely with paul that voting for him was a very, very important concept and focus for his work. And by the way, chief justice ward who wrote the brown decision when asked in retirement what his most important opinion was, he did not say brown. He said it was the reapportionment cases because it provided democracy and democratic representation for all americans. So put marshall who argued brown and warren who wrote brown together and theyre both going to end up at the same thing and same place that yes, we have to win court cases but we also have to be politically involved in our country if we want our country to succeed. I think that was our last question id like to thank our two distinguished speakers this evening. Please give them a rousing round of applause. [applause] id like to remind you of a couple of things. The book sale and signing is upstairs. And well get to meet our director spencer crew, and hell signed it for you. You also have in your handout, a short evaluation we would love to hear your feedback of his program. And we have volunteers who will collect those evaluations from you. Hope to see you again in the near future. Have a great night. Aptioning Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] this is American History tv on cspan 3 where each weekend we feature 48 hours of programs exploring our nations past. Sunday on American History v, historian jerian hardesty talks about native lands, white worlds. A history of slavery in new england. Heres a preview. While there are not large numbers of slave people in new england per se, the entire economy revolved around what historians called the business of slavery. The selling of proceed physicians to the plantation provisions to the plantations, the transportation of enslaved people throughout the americas and also the transatlantic slave trade. Go back to that in a second. The entire economy revolved around enslavement. Historian of new england, a guy by the name of Mark Peterson published a giant book on boston and phrased it pretty well when he said boston was a Slave Society where most of the enslaved people lived elsewhere. And thats what we could say or new england as a whole. So the demographics i push back against getting caught up in the demographics for these reasons i just explained but also in the way we see white new englanders embrace slave trading by the late 17th century. They embrace slave trading especially from africa but also within the americas as a form of commerce. Rhode island, the colony of rhode island became the center of slave trading in all british North Carolina north america. If you take all the enslaved trade of all the colonies that became the United States they would not equal those of rhode island. Rhode island is by far the center of the slave trade and rivals those of the west indies as well. Its an extensive slave trade central to the economy of the colony. Learn more about slavery in new england this sunday at 6 55 p. M. Eastern here on american istory tv. Next on lectures and history, university of North Carolina at chapel hill Professor William sturkey teaches a class about expanding rights in the 1960s and 1970s, looking at womens liberation and the gay rights movement. He covers topics such as birth control, the equal rights amendment and the stonewall riots. So the rights revolution today. Lets start withit