3
The Brown Decision
Marshall, Thurgood
(1908–93): NAACP chief
counsel nicknamed ‘Mr
Civil Rights’ for his many
legal victories over dis-
crimination, especially
Brown.
C
ivil rights attorney Thurgood Marshalloften asked black youngsters
in the 1940s what they wanted to do when they grew up. When they
answered that their ambitions were to become butlers, postmen, or
maids, Marshall realized that these children were already defeated psycho-
logically. Marshall blamed segregation for this crippling sense of insecurity
and vowed to strike it down in the seventeen states that operated a biracial
school system. To do so, he would have to use the white man’s law to win
justice in the white man’s court.
Marshall learned the law at Howard University in Washington, DC, the
capstone of black education. He knew firsthand how racism stymied black
ambitions because he was denied admission to the University of Maryland.
At Howard, he received his legal training from Charles Houston, a brilliant
Harvard law graduate and the NAACP’s chief legal counsel, and from
Houston’s equally brilliant cousin, William Hastie. Turning Howard Law
from an unaccredited night school into a civil rights laboratory, Houston
taught his protégés to become social engineers to abolish segregation.
Combining the skills of a shrewd legal strategist, community organizer,
and raconteur, the tenacious Marshall scoured the South looking for suitable
clients. Working for the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc.
(the ‘Inc. Fund’), Marshall faced a daunting task, for the US Supreme Court
had long been hostile to blacks. Marshall and his superb legal team – Robert
Carter, Jack Greenberg, George Hayes, James Nabrit, Jr., and Spottswood
Robinson – chipped away at the wall of segregation from the top down, start-
ing with graduate schools, ‘the soft underbelly’ of Jim Crow. This was a key
strategy because judges were familiar with what constituted a good law
school. In addition, the NAACP attorneys demanded the equalization of
teacher salaries and school facilities, rather than desegregation itself. By
attacking segregation indirectly, Marshall hoped to forestall white fury and to
make equalization too expensive. Angry whites stalked Marshall anyway. As
he entered southern towns, he needed around-the-clock bodyguards and aHouston, Charles(1895–
1950): Howard University
law dean and architect of
the NAACP’s legal strat-
egy to defeat Jim Crow.