Thurgood Marshall is one of the most inspirational men in civil rights history to date. He is just one of the motivating start buttons to the movement that I think could have been written about a thousand times and still not cover the complexity of his heart, strength and ideas. I believe this is why I have chosen to do my report on him out of all the other justices to date. His life alone has brought about so many changes in social, racial, and political America that without his assistance today's world would not be, at all, as it is at this moment in time.
The book I read was called Dreammakers, Dream Breakers. Written by Carl T. Bowan, this autobiography showed more insight to the life of Marshall than anything else that I ever seen. Through out the twenty-four chapters, Bowan covered Marshall's life from childhood to his passing day. With this review I would like to show what I have learned and gained from this excersise and show how much Marshall had to do with the changes in procedures of criminal law, civil rights, and politics in general. .
The year before Thurgood was born, the Saturday Evening Post had this quote from a Mississippi Governor, James K. Vardaman on the American Negro:.
"The Negro should never have been trusted with the ballot. He is different from the white man. He is congenitally unqualified to exercise the most responsible duty of citizenship. He is physically, mentally, morally, racially and eternally the white man's inferior. There is nothing in the history of his race, nothing in his individual character, nothing in his achievements past nor his promise for the future, which entitles him to stand side by side with the white man at the ballot box .
We must repeal and modify the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Then we shall be able in our legislation to recognize the Negro's racial peculiarities, and make laws to fit them.".
.
Thorogood "Thurgood" Marshall was born July 2nd, 1908, in Baltimore and brought up by very opinionated but open-minded parents.
