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Thurgood Marshall House Restoration Preserving History and Advancing Legacy

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Thurgood Marshall House Restoration Preserving History and Advancing Legacy Thurgood Marshall House Restoration Preserving history and advancing legacy 1632-1634 Division Street Baltimore, MD 2 Objective: To acquire Thurgood Marshall’s childhood home - restore, preserve, and establish it as a national civil rights destination, community law center, and catalyst for neighborhood renewal. 3 Thurgood Marshall Marshall was born in Baltimore, MD, on July 2, 1908. He was descended from slaves on both sides of his family. His father, William Marshall, worked as a railroad porter, and his mother Norma, as a teacher; they instilled in him an appreciation for the United States Constitution and the rule of law. Marshall first learned how to debate from his father, who took Marshall and his brother to watch court cases; they would later debate what they had seen. The family also debated current events after dinner. Marshall said that although his father never told him to became a lawyer, he “turned me into one. He did it by teaching me to argue, by challenging my logic on every point, by making me prove every statement I made.” Marshall attended Frederick Douglass High School in Baltimore and was placed in the class with the best students. He graduated a year early in 1925 with a B-grade average, and placed in the top third of the class. He went to Lincoln University. In his freshman year he opposed the integration of African-American professors at the university. In his second year Marshall participated in a sit-in protest against segregation at a local movie theater. In that year, he was initiated as a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, the first fraternity founded by and for blacks. His marriage to Vivien Buster Burey in September 1929 encouraged him to take his studies seriously, and he graduated from Lincoln with honors (cum laude) Bachelor of Arts in Humanities, with a major in American literature and philosophy. In 1930 Marshall applied to his hometown law school, the University of Maryland School of Law, but was denied admission because of the school's segregation policy. Marshall instead attended Howard University School of Law, where he worked harder than he had at Lincoln and his views on discrimination were heavily influenced by the dean Charles Hamilton Houston. In 1933, he graduated first in his class at Howard. 6 Marshall's first major court case came in 1933 when he successfully sued the University of Maryland to admit a young African American Amherst University graduate named Donald Gaines Murray. Applauding Marshall's victory, author H.L. Mencken wrote that the decision of denial by the University of Maryland Law School was "brutal and absurd," and they should not object to the "presence among them of a self-respecting and ambitious young Afro-American well prepared for his studies by four years of hard work in a class A college.“ Thurgood Marshall followed his Howard University mentor, Charles Hamilton Houston to New York and later became Chief Counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). During this period, Marshall was asked by the United Nations and the United Kingdom to help draft the constitutions of the emerging African nations of Ghana and what is now Tanzania. It was felt that the person who so successfully fought for the rights of America's oppressed minority would be the perfect person to ensure the rights of the White citizens in these two former European colonies. After amassing an impressive record of Supreme Court challenges to state-sponsored discrimination, including the landmark Brown v. Board decision in 1954, President John F. Kennedy appointed Thurgood Marshall to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. In this capacity, he wrote over 150 decisions including support for the rights of immigrants, limiting government intrusion in cases involving illegal search and seizure, double jeopardy, and right to privacy issues. Biographers Michael Davis and Hunter Clark note that, "none of his (Marshall's) 98 majority decisions was ever reversed by the Supreme Court." In 1965 President Lyndon Johnson appointed Judge Marshall to the office of U.S. Solicitor General. Before his subsequent nomination to the United States Supreme Court in 1967, Thurgood Marshall won 14 of the 19 cases he argued before the Supreme Court on behalf of the government. Indeed, at the time Thurgood Marshall represented and won more cases before the United States Supreme Court than any other American. 7 Lillie Mae Carroll Jackson Museum Star Spangled Banner Flag House Built Late 1800’s / Restored 2012 Built 1793 / Restored 1927 1320 Eutaw Pl, Baltimore, MD 844 E Pratt St, Baltimore, MD Edgar Allan Poe House & Museum Built 1832 / Restored 2014 203 N Amity St, Baltimore, MD 8 National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Hotel Memphis, TN The Legacy Museum Montgomery, AL Fundraising Target Amount: $3,188,640 $1,000,000 of which will go towards endowment for project with remainder to be put toward the acquisition and redevelopment. 10 11 12.
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