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Blacks and Whites By The Thousands Visit Marshall’s Casket By Bichard Cardli Awoclatwl PrtM Writer WASHINGTON (AP) — Thou sands (tf Americans, black and while together, visiled Thurgood Marshall's casket as he lay in state Wednesday. The line of mourners wrapped around the Siqveme Court building where he won his greatest civil ri^ victory and later served 24 ye^ as the first black justice. During the 12 hours of viewing, 18J38 people paid their respects, court qwkesman Ed Turner said. Many said they felt compelled to say goodbye to a man they never met "He was a man of courage, a man of dignity and a man of stimigdi," said Erold Jean Francois, an im migrant from Haiti who attmds a Miami high school. "He did the best he could for this country... for blacks and whites.* Marshall’s wife, Cecilia, and two sons, Thurgood Jr. and John William, led a procession into the imposing building on Capitol Hill. "The battle done, the victory won ... the songs of triumph have, begun. Hallelujah,* said the Rev. ’ .Kawsai Thoinell, canon of the Washington Cathedral, during a brief ceremony. Marshall became only the second' Supreme Court justice to be honored by having his casket lie in state at the court building. The other was Chief Justice Earl War- ten in 1974. In 23 years as chief counsel for the Nafinial Association for the Advtmcement of Coined People, Marshall established himself as the nation's greatest civil rights lawyer. The landmark 1954 decision out lawing racial segregation in public education was the ruling that broke the back of American apartheid. As Marshall’s casket was carried across a sunlit marble plaza, current and retired justices waited as honorary pallbearers atop the im posing steps. They accompanied the casket through the building’s main entrance, walking under the words carved into marble S8-. years , ago; "Equal Justice Under Law." Redred- ■Justi^ William J. Brennan, 86, remained inside, seated in a wheel chair. Brennan, Marshall’s closest friend on the high court, needed help from Justice David li Souter to join the others when they stood in silence as the casket was placed on the bbck-drqted bier that once supported the , coffins of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. By the time the building was opened to the public, hundreds WCTe waiting in the chilly morning air to pay their respects. First in line was Donald Adams of Camp Springs, Md., a retired government worka who attended segregated schools for blacks while growing up in the nation’s capital. . "I’m here because I owe him quite a bit My family owes him quite a bit. this counDy owes him quite a bit," Adams said Sharon Glover smiled while recalling the day she fust attended a racially integrated school as a sixth-grader in Tarboro, N.C. "I’m here to say thanks to Mr. Marshall," she said. "He meant so much to my life." Ida Beasley led a dozen wide-eyed first-graders through the line and later ex plained, "We wanted the kids to be part of this historic tribute to a great hero." Arthur Williams said he wanted to say goodbye to the man who "was Mr. Integration to us." Two Marines, one white and one black, traveled together to fde past Marshall’s casket and be among the first to see his official portrait, painted in 1990 by Wash ington artist Simmie Knox. Without Marshall’s accomplish ments, "he and I wouldn’t be stand ing next to each other today" said Capt. Eric Young as he gestured tb his companion, Pfc. Robert C. Achoe Jr. The court building remained open more than 10 hours as court offi-' cials tried to accommodate all those who followed. Congress honored Marshall by passing a bill Wednesday to name the capital city’s new federal judi cialbuilding after him. . -1" Marshall’s Role In Kentucky Is Recalled The NAACP alleged that tutoring was inherently unequal. There was no law library, for example, not to mention "the tradition of the law school, associating with people who were going to be nractieing in your field after graduauon," Shobe said. "Those strategies were By Charles Wolfe Associated Press Writer FRANKFORT, KY. (AP) — As a civil-rights lawyer, Thurgood Mar shall won court rulings with a specific strategy. He proved blacks were denied the benefit of institu tions they paid taxes to support. That strategy — inequality of ser- planned by Marshall." vices — was brought to bear in two Kentucky cases in 1949. One forced the integration of Louis ville’s public parks; the other opened the University of Kentucky. They were among a series of cases Marshall masterminded fpr the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in the decades before his elevation (o the U.S. Supreme Court Marshall dominated legal strategy sessions at NAACP headquarters in New York, former Jefferson Circuit Judge Benjamin Shobe said Mon day. "Marshall was an imposing fig ure," said Shobe, who was attorney for the organization’s. Louisville chapter at the time. THURGOOD MARSHALL speaks to reporte>s during the school desegregation case in Clarendon County, South CaroUna, which was ihe forerunner to the 1954 Brown versus Topeka Board of Education suit. Stondin^ back of Marshall is Dr. William Gibson of South Caro- hna who latfr became NAACP national chairman of the board. (Photo from tS le Archives of A.M. Rivera, Jr.) Marshall: Easygoing, Fun-Loving Except Inside the Courtroom By Mary Pemberton Associated Press Writer BALTIMORE (AP) — Thurgood Marshall was remembered Sunday as an easygoing man who loved to joke, except when he stepped inside a courtroom. His demeanor changed when he was fighting for civil rights, said retired Maryland District Court Judge William H. Murphy Sr. "He would chew you up," Mur phy said. "He was aggressive. He was not inclined to compromise." Marshall was bom in Baltimore on July 2, 1908, and lived in a com fortable, middle class neighbor hood. His father was a headwaiter and his mother a schoolteacher. He was the great-grandson of a slave but went on to become the first black Supreme Court Justice. He sat on the court for 24 years. Murphy, 75, said when he was a boy he remembers Marshall drop ping by his home fairly often to see his falher, who was treasurer for the local branch of the National As sociation for the Advancement of Colored People. "I knew him well because he was in and out of my house all the time when I was a youngster," said Mur phy. The two families were neigh outside the jeourtroom, Murphy said. ; "He was a Wonderful person — open, warmj, garrulous and uninhibited," he said. "He was a joke-telling ^y." Enolia McMillan, former national president of craft ^ saNAAci>,;Sd sh^fe^Saii in -Laterr when-^Marshall -attended "the 193(K when'they worked to- Lincoln University in Lincoln, Pa., gether. Murphy’s brother, James, was Mar shall’s roommate and served as best man when Marshall got married. "Thurgood could raise hell, stay up all night, and still make straight A’s," Murphy said. Marshall left Lincoln University to study at Howard University Law School in Washington, where he graduated at the top of his class in 1933. After a career as a civil rights lawyer, appeals court judge, and "He did a remarkable job at win ning his cases in court," said Ms. McMillan. "He sparked confidence in the final righteous outcome of the civil rights movement” Mar shall worked for 23 years as legal director of the NAACP, head quartered in Baltimore. Ms. McMillan, 88, said Marshall not only knew the law but was not afraid to seize the moment in order to win cases. "He was courageous," said Ms. McMillan. "He was a person who wasn’t afraid to,take the initiative." Marshall Remembered By South Carolinians U.S. solicitor general, Marshall was ^ afraid to^take the initiative." aii^inted to the Supreme Court on Maryl^d Circuit Court June 13,1967. Robert Dt Watts, 70, said he Marshall was a different person knew Marshall j because the Mar- Marshall Was No Stranger Finney said Marshall’s basic legal uguments helped not only blacks, but also women and the hand icapped. Marshall’s decision to argue the Briggs case went against the advice of some colleagues, said Dr. Wil liam F. Gibson of Greenville, chairman of the board of directors of the NAACP. "Briggs vs. Elliott presented not (AP) — Retired Supreme Court ustice Thurgood Marshall holds a special place in the memories of South C^lina civil rights leaders. "I am convinced that he did as much as anybody for making the Constitution of the United States a living document," said Ernest A. Finney Jr. of Sumter, associate jtis- tice of the state Supreme Court. a. uiv ui.iv. Just as hfarshall was the first "Wden he stepped into the ro6m black to serve on the nation’s high- only a legal danger, but a physical and started talking, his personality est court, Finney was the first black danger," Gibson said. "You could seemed to dominate everything. on South Carolina’s highest "He would cut Ibrough all the Uibunal. technicalities we bad raised and He first met Marshall in 1954 at a jump right straight to the issue of slate convention of the National inequality. ... He would bring us Association for the Advancement right back to the Constitution." The of Colored People in Spartanburg. NAACP was filing a lot of civil Marshall, as a young NAACP at torney, argued a Clarendon County case before the U.S. Supreme Court that helped lead to the court’s land mark school desegregation ruling. The 1950 Briggs vs. Elliott case was one of five consolidated into Brown vs. Board of Education that rights cases at that time. Shobe said. All were based on inequality of services because no court had yet declared segregation un constitutional. In the case of Lyman Johnson, a Louisville educator who sued for "I""'" uim admission to graduate school at the Marshall s^ed tefore the U.S. UniversUy of Kentucky, "we as- Supreme Court. The court found serted that segregation in itself was the stm^ of "sqiar^ but equal" an inequality," Shobe said. schools fm blacks and whites was But U.S. District Judge H. htUttst. Church Ford didn’t go that far. and I „ “ only ^ the Supreim Johnson's case was "wcni on lesser uourt d^isuni became a reality grounds," Shobe said. . democracy in edtica- No blacks were admitted to grad- twortunity became uaie programs in Kentucky in those “vail^le for all people m the days. iMervt, the state paid fa said attorney John Roy Har- blacks to attend universities out ol counsel for state, or for aspjring law students to NAACP s Columbia branch, be tutored in private law offices. , be killed for it "But Thurgood did not fear any thing. Thurgood was a very courageous lawyer." Finney said Marshall "was the inspiration for those of us who believed the law was the way to go in addressing society’s wrongs." U.S. District Judge Matthew J. Perry, the first black federal judge appointed in South Carolina, agreed that Mar shall was a role model for himself and other young lawyers on the NAACP legal team that Marshall headed in the 1950s and early 1960s. "He was the premier constitu tional lawyer and an inspiration to several generations of' lawyers,' To Louisiana Thurgood Marshall made a Louisiana reputation well before becoming the first black justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. Lawrence Conley remembers those early days well. Conley ^and his wife, Ersie, provided a night’s lodging when Marshall came to Lake Charles to argue a school desegregation lawsuit "He was the national attorney for the civil rights movement” Conley recalled. "So he and (New Orleans attorney) A.P. Tureaud came down here to be attorneys for us during desegregation. "He was such a dynamic man, that when he faced the local at torneys, they just threw up their hands and surrendered." Marshall’s two-day trip to Lake Charles in 1952 wasn’t his first to Louisiana. In the late 1930s and the 1940s, he joined Tureaud in a NAACP fight to make black teachers’ pay in New Orleans equal to that of white teachers. Tureaud handled most of the day- to-day work in the case, which resulted in a 1941 lawsuit. Marshall Perry said. "I will remember his ‘“"sun. ivia dedication to the principle of equal hips to the city to assist justice under the law." Marshall, When Tureaud wrote Marshall in Finney said, was "a robust warm, informing him that the hard-woiking individual who gave School Board was offering to raise totally of himself and who served •’■hck teachers’ pay over five years, as an inqiiration to me as an indi- Marshall was incredulous, vidual and to a large number of Ihii* the plan submitted by the people." School Board stinks," Marshall told Tureaud, according to historian Joe Logsdon’s book, "Crescent City Schools." "In the first place, five years is too long. In the second place, there are too many catches. And in the third place. I’m sure our teachers are opposed to it." On Sept. 1, 1942, a compromise was signed in which pay was to be equalized by the next year. ,"The pay equalization case was one of the several steps that led to the Brown vs. Board of Education case," in which Marshall won the Supreme Court ruling that segrega tion of schools was unconstitu tional, said Tom Dent, a New Or leans resident working on a book about the civil rights struggle. Dent, who worked for Marshall in the early 1960s as a press attache for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in New York, remembers seeing Marshall for the first time in New Orleans as Marshall argued a case in the 1940s. "I was a child and we had never seen a black lawyer in a courtroom," said Dent, a former ex ecutive director of the Jazz and Heritage Foundation. Revius Ortique, the first black justice elected to the Louisiana Su)xeme Court, kiaew Marshall and worked with hinj on desegregation cases in New Orleans. Ortique was jxesent at a 1967 meeting of the National Bar Asso-. shall home was directly behind h home. "Our back gates touched cac other," he said. During the 1950s, Watts an Marshall worked on civil right cases for the NAACP, but Watt said it wasn’t all work. Every s often, Marshall liked to get togethe with the other lawyers, tip a glass and relax. "He liked to socialize,” sail Watts. "He liked to get up and tell; joke. He was great fiin." Watts sail in the early 1980s he went ti Washington to ask Marshall to at tend a ceremony dedicating a statui of Marshall in front of the federa court house in Baltimore. Knowing that Marshall did noi return to Baltimore often. Watts said he had to come up with some thing special. - "I got down on my knees. I reallj did. But Thurgood; he Uked that He thought that was pretty funny.’ The strategy worked. Marshall at tended the ceremony, lie said. ciation when President Lyndoi Johnson announced he wa nominating Marshall to be the firs black justice on the U.S. Supremi Court. ”We were patting each other or the back when we left that meet ing," Ortique said. "We thought i was a great victory." Moral (Continued From Page 10) the National Association for thi Advancement of Colored People ii the 1954 Brown vs. the Board o: Education Supreme Court case tha called for the desegregation ol scIkxjIs. Jackson said legal history can be defined as before and after Mar shall’s contributions to the court. "Thurgoexl Marshall is one of the great legal, moral minds America has ever produced by his commit ment and arguments for equal pro tection under the law. He M a legal movement to establish the character of America to prove its highest purpose. "He led the drive to pull down the walls that separate American from American by law. The ’54 Supreme Court decision paved the way for Martin Luther King Jr.’, it paved the way for a unified integrated milita ry, it paved the way for America’s reputation as leader of the free world." And finally, Jackson said, "it paved the waj for two Southcraers-Clinton and Gore — to run and to win." JacksiOn spoke be fore boarding a flight ID New York, where he would meet with black business and Haitian refugee lead ers on Monday.
The Carolina Times (Durham, N.C.)
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Feb. 6, 1993, edition 1
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