naacp attorney who led courtroom battles to abolish segregated schools

by Florian Keeling 10 min read

The first general counsel of NAACP, Charles Hamilton Houston exposed the hollowness of the "separate but equal" doctrine and paved the way for the Supreme Court ruling outlawing school segregation.

What did the NAACP do to end segregation?

Led initially by Charles Houston and later by Thurgood Marshall, NAACP attorneys started the legal battle by focusing on graduate and professional school education. They believed that winning legal battles for integration at this level would be easiest and would create the legal basis for a broader attack on racial segregation at all levels.

Who led the campaign to desegregate schools in Arkansas?

The massive effort to desegregate public schools across the United States was a major goal of the Civil Rights Movement. Since the 1930s, lawyers from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) had strategized to bring local lawsuits to court, arguing that separate was not equal and that every child, regardless of race, deserved a first-class …

When did Thurgood Marshall establish the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund?

Moorfield Storey, the NAACP's first president and a constitutional attorney, argued the case before the U.S. Supreme Court in April 1917. The Court reversed the decision of the Kentucky Court of Appeals, ruling that the Louisville ordinance violated the Fourteenth Amendment.

What was the first major legal case the NAACP defended?

Daisy Bates, publisher of The Arkansas State Press and president of the Arkansas State Conference of NAACP Branches, led the NAACP’s campaign to desegregate the public schools in Little Rock, Arkansas. Thurgood Marshall served as chief counsel.

Who was the naacp lead attorney?

Thurgood MarshallThurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an American lawyer and civil rights activist who served as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from October 1967 until October 1991....Thurgood MarshallDiedJanuary 24, 1993 (aged 84) Bethesda, Maryland, U.S.Political partyDemocratic24 more rows

What NAACP lawyer decided to organize cases against segregated public schools?

Thurgood MarshallThe Court agreed with Thurgood Marshall and his fellow NAACP lawyers that segregated schooling violated the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection of law.

Who was the lead lawyer for the naacp in the Brown case?

Thurgood MarshallThe NAACP and Thurgood Marshall took up Brown's case along with similar cases in South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware as Brown v. Board of Education. Oliver Brown died in 1961. Born in 1917, Robert Carter, who served as an attorney for the plaintiffs in Briggs v.Jun 8, 2021

How did the naacp fight school segregation?

Since the 1930s, lawyers from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) had strategized to bring local lawsuits to court, arguing that separate was not equal and that every child, regardless of race, deserved a first-class education. These lawsuits were combined into the landmark Brown v.

Which Supreme Court ruling was overturned by the decision to desegregate public schools on the basis that separate is inherently unequal?

Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (347 U.S. 483) Supreme Court decision (Bell, 1980; Chapman, 2005; Glickstein, 1975; Kauper, 1954). The Supreme Court's unanimous decision of “separate is inherently unequal” overturned the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case's “separate but equal” ruling.

Why did the Supreme Court decide to overturn Plessy versus Ferguson as explained in Brown versus Board of Education?

Why did the Supreme Court decide to overturn Plessy v. Ferguson, as explained in Brown v. Board of Education? Separate is inherently unequal.

Who served as the lead lawyer for the naacp and oversaw cases like Davis v County School Board of Prince Edward and Brown v. Board of Education?

Once again, Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund handled these cases. Although it acknowledged some of the plaintiffs'/plaintiffs claims, a three-judge panel at the U.S. District Court that heard the cases ruled in favor of the school boards.

Who led the naacp defense team in Virginia?

Thurgood Marshall was a member of the NAACP legal defense team in the Brown v. Board of Education case. He later became the first African-American Supreme Court Justice. Led the NAACP Legal Defense team in Virginia in the Brown vs.

Who inspired Thurgood Marshall to devote his career to desegregation efforts in public Education?

As a young man, perhaps the person who had the most influence on him was his father, a man who always told his son to stand up for his beliefs. His father's influence was so strong that, later in life, Marshall once said that his father "never told me to become a lawyer, he turned me into one."

What strategy did the NAACP use most effectively to challenge segregated law school admissions?

What strategy did the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People use most effectively to challenge segregated law school admissions? Litigation.

When did segregation begin and end?

In the U.S. South, Jim Crow laws and legal racial segregation in public facilities existed from the late 19th century into the 1950s. The civil rights movement was initiated by Black Southerners in the 1950s and '60s to break the prevailing pattern of segregation. In 1954, in its Brown v.

When did the Supreme Court ruled that segregation was unconstitutional?

May 17, 1954The decision of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka on May 17, 1954 is perhaps the most famous of all Supreme Court cases, as it started the process ending segregation. It overturned the equally far-reaching decision of Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896.May 17, 2021

Early life and education

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Marshall was born on July 2, 1908 in Baltimore, Maryland to William Marshall, railroad porter, who later worked on the staff of Gibson Island Club, a white-only country club and Norma Williams, a school teacher. One of his great-grandfathers had been taken as a slave from the Congo to Maryland where he was eventually fr…
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Early career

  • Immediately after graduation, Marshall opened a law office in Baltimore and in the early 1930s, he represented the local NAACP chapter in a successful lawsuit that challenged the University of Maryland Law School over its segregation policy. In addition, he successfully brought lawsuits that integrated other state universities. In 1936, Marshall became the NAACPs chief legal couns…
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Significance

  • After founding the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in 1940, Marshall became the key strategist in the effort to end racial segregation, in particular meticulously challenging Plessy v. Ferguson , the Court-sanctioned legal doctrine that called for separate but equal structures for white and blacks. Marshall won a series of court decisions that gradually struck down that doctrine, ultimately lea…
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Leadership

  • In 1957 LDF, led by Marshall, became an entirely separate entity from the NAACP with its own leadership and board of directors and has remained a separate organization to this day.
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Later career

  • In 1961, President Kennedy nominated Marshall to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in which he wrote 112 opinions, none of which was overturned on appeal. Four years later, he was appointed by President Johnson to be solicitor general and in 1967 President Johnson nominated him to the Supreme Court to which he commented: I have a lifetime appointment and I intend to …
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Criticisms

  • As a Supreme Court Justice, he became increasingly dismayed and disappointed as the courts majority retreated from remedies he felt were necessary to address remnants of Jim Crow. In his Bakke dissent, he wrote: In light of the sorry history of discrimination and its devastating impact on the lives of Negroes, bringing the Negro into the mainstream of American life should be a sta…
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Legacy

  • In particular, Marshall fervently dissented in cases in which the Supreme Court upheld death sentences; he wrote over 150 opinions dissenting from cases in which the Court refused to hear death penalty appeals. Among Marshalls salient majority opinions for the Supreme Court were: Amalgamated Food Employees Union v. Logan Valley Plaza, in 1968, which determined that a m…
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