Civil rights attorney Thurgood Marshall's triumph in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision to desegregate America's public schools completed the final leg of an heroic journey to end legal segregation. For 20 years, during wartime and the Depression, Marshall had traveled hundreds of thousands of miles through the Jim Crow South of the United States, fighting segregation case by case, establishing precedent after precedent, all leading up to one of the most important legal decisions in American history. Along the way, he escaped the gun of a Dallas sheriff, was pursued by the Ku Klux Klan on Long Island, hid in bushes from a violent mob in Detroit, and even survived his own lynching. In this impossible environment, Thurgood Marshall won more Supreme Court cases than any lawyer in American history, and set the stage for the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Marshall, who went on to become the first black Supreme Court justice in 1967, made the work of civil rights pioneers like the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks possible, by laying the groundwork to end legal segregation and changing the American legal landscape.
Civil rights attorney Thurgood Marshall's triumph in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision to desegregate America's public schools completed the final leg of an heroic journey to end legal segregation. For 20 years, during wartime and the Depression, Marshall had traveled hundreds of thousands of miles through the Jim Crow South of the United States, fighting segregation case by case, establishing precedent after precedent, all leading up to one of the most important legal decisions in American history. Along the way, he escaped the gun of a Dallas sheriff, was pursued by the Ku Klux Klan on Long Island, hid in bushes from a violent mob in Detroit, and even survived his own lynching. In this impossible environment, Thurgood Marshall won more Supreme Court cases than any lawyer in American history, and set the stage for the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Marshall, who went on to become the first black Supreme Court justice in 1967, made the work of civil rights pioneers like the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks possible, by laying the groundwork to end legal segregation and changing the American legal landscape.
General Note
Classroom Video On Demand is distributed by Infobase for Films for the Humanities & Sciences, Cambridge Educational, Meridian Education, and Shopware.
Encoded with permission by Infobase on November 23, 2014.
Content Note
Introduction --(2:41) -- Birth of a Nation -- (2:09) -- Segregated Childhood -- (1:55) -- Howard University Law School -- (2:00) -- Charles H. Houston -- (2:36) -- Challenging Plessy v. Ferguson -- (3:24) -- Trip of Documentation -- (2:56) -- Into Practice -- (2:28) -- Murray v. Pearson -- (1:31) -- Odd Couple -- (2:32) -- Teacher Pay -- (2:21) -- Internal Politics -- (1:56) -- Mr. Civil Rights -- (3:24) -- On the Road and at Home -- (3:02) -- Sensation and Danger -- (3:12) -- Is it Worth it? -- (2:36) -- Bellwether Case -- (2:13) -- Segregated Services -- (3:07) -- Close Shave -- (3:32) -- Brown v. Board of Education -- (2:35) -- Just the Start of the Fight -- (2:44) -- Credits: Mr. Civil Rights: Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP -- (1:37).