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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A true American Revolutionary, November 5, 1998
By A Customer
Despite the great number of biographies and reporting about the justices and inner working of the Supreme Court, no recent release tells the true story behind the story -- the human lives behind all the politics and power. However, in a new biography about the first African-American Supreme Court justice, Washington Post writer and Fox News commentator Juan Williams makes Thurgood Marshall come alive beyond the legal arguments and politics. Williams takes the reader throughout the course of Marshall's life, and ironically focuses only the final four chapters on his Supreme Court years. Using this technique for the life story of most past and present Justices would be a meandering re-telling about growing up in a political family, attending prestigious schools, and making lots of money before landing a coveted job on the high bench. But Marshall's life is so completely different from most of the men (and they have been almost exclusively men) that have wielded this ultimate judicial power over the country. And it is that unique life story that allows Marshall to transform the nation. Starting with his rise from a meager beginning in Baltimore, Williams guides us through the fascinating history of Marshall's activist family - from the defiant runaway slave for one grandfather to the other grandfather, a surly Civil War veteran who challenged the brutal racism of the local police. It was in this 19th century city of Baltimore, full of free blacks who owned their own businesses and ran their own private schools, that formed the community that gave birth to Thurgood Marshall. These activists, who demanded that their rights be respected even in a time of Jim Crow oppression, would nurture Marshall's social consciousness. Marshall's childhood is filled with his own battles against the system of segregation that oppressed so many African-Americans across the country. Particularly poignant was the story about Marshall, working as a delivery boy during high school, being pulled off a trolley car and called "Nigger" because he stepped in front of a white woman. Marshall, strong-willed even as a teen, would not take that kind of abuse, and a huge fight broke out between Marshall and the white man who had grabbed him. But Marshall's struggle against Jim Crow only increased after he went away to college. Attending Lincoln University, he fell into a friendship with the poet Langston Hughes, who was also a student at the all-male school. Their discussions about American society lead Marshall to take stronger views on race. But it wasn't until he graduated college and wanted to attend law school that the revolutionary spirit fully took hold of Thurgood Marshall. The University of Maryland would not allow him to attend because of their racist policies. So Marshall was forced to take the train everyday from Baltimore into Washington to attend law school at Howard University. There, the tough-minded dean, Charles Houston, took the bright young student under his wing and gave Marshall the training and the desire to do something radical - begin the long process of ending segregation. Williams recounts the many years of Marshall's work with the NAACP, where as the lead attorney he won several notable cases ending discrimination in everything from housing to voting to bussing to teachers salaries. But it was his work in Brown versus Board of Education that really broke the back of segregation and made Marshall, as Williams contends, one of the most important lawyers of the 20th century. Williams goes through several of these historic cases, but the most compelling tales involve Marshall's defense of poor black men who had been accused of rape or murder and are rushed into kangaroo courts by southern, all-white law enforcement. Marshall's triumphs and failures all come out in these stories filled with both great humor and tremendous tragedy. Thoroughly researched and with an impressive set of interviews, including over half-dozen of Marshall's colleagues on the Supreme Court, we get to see the full side of Thurgood Marshall. From his fights and surprising friendship with FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, to his competition with Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. It is clear through this parade of the famous and infamous that Thurgood Marshall had such a profound impact on this country. It is unfortunate that at the time of his death, he felt so forgotten and unappreciated. This lengthy biography covers so many important issues of American life and law. While readers will not find theoretical legal analysis, they will become absorbed in a rich narrative filled with lively characters. But most importantly, this book of Marshall's life brings into focus something that has been lost in recent shouting matches about Louis Farrakhan, affirmative action, and other issues of race that divide us. And that simple truth is that individual rights must be afforded the fullest protections of the law. That was Marshall's life work and that is his legacy.
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