Marshalling Justice

November 1, 2010
Readers for whom Marshall is best known for arguing and winning Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka in 1954 and becoming the first African-American Supreme Court Justice in 1967 will find this collection of letters written between 1935 and 1957 thoroughly illuminating. Long's introductions lend a fluidity and coherence to the book; he presents each letter with so much context that the book has elements of a biography of Marshall and a history of the civil rights movement. The letters—which span Marshall's legal career from his first major civil rights case, Murray v. Pearson, in 1936—contain a rich vein of local history as well as correspondence concerning his major cases. Nor does Marshall's major case law focus deter him from attention to media misrepresentation, racial inequities in pay, military racism, or accounts of prison abuse and the persistence of lynching. "At times," Marshall wrote in 1949, "I get a little anxious about people who have no regard whatsoever for the amount of time necessary for lawyers to prepare this involved type of litigation." These letters offer a welcome and readable inner glimpse into that laborious and complex work. (Jan.)
Toward the Setting Sun: John Ross, the Cherokees, and the

October 15, 2010

Long (Religious Studies, Peace and Conflict Studies/Elizabethtown Coll.; Billy Graham and the Beloved Community: America's Evangelist and the Dream of Martin Luther King, Jr., 2006, etc.) presents an inspiring account of Thurgood Marshall's work as a civil-rights activist.

As the NAACP's leading lawyer between 1934 and 1957, the author writes, Marshall was "known to everyday blacks as 'Mr. Civil Rights,' struggl[ing] day and night against racial discrimination and segregation in schools, transportation, the military, businesses, voting booths, courtrooms, and neighborhoods." According to Long, Thurgood Marshall and Martin Luther King Jr. emerged as "the two greatest civil rights leaders in the history of the United States." The approximately 200 letters and memoranda reproduced here give a comprehensive overview of Marshall's role in "galvanizing the civil rights movement" and paving the way for the freedom riders. While Marshall's 1954 victory against segregated schools in Brown v. the Board of Education, which he argued before the Supreme Court, and his defense of Rosa Parks in the Montgomery bus boycott were historic legal victories, he worked tirelessly on behalf of ordinary black people who faced lynch mobs, police brutality, biased juries and sentencing to chain gangs for misdemeanors and minor offenses. Although he was primarily a litigator before becoming a judge, he also recognized the importance of grass-roots action when legal action failed—e.g., in 1937, after the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal on behalf of the Scottsboro Boys (nine African-American youths wrongly convicted of rape and sentenced to be executed), Marshall suggested that a mothers' march be organized to support an appeal for clemency. However, writes Long, he remained wary of the role of "African American militants and individuals with leftist leanings."

A nuanced treatment of a towering figure.

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

November 1, 2010

As an NAACP attorney, decades before LBJ appointed him to the Supreme Court, Marshall worked tirelessly against racial discrimination and segregation. This selection of letters reveals the depth and breadth of Marshall's work long before what we consider the start of the Civil Rights Movement.

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.