Thurgood Marshall Quotes

“I used to have a lot of fights with Martin about his theory about disobeying the law,” Marshall said in an interview years later. “I didn’t believe in that. I thought you did have a right to disobey the law, and you also had a right to go to jail for it, and he kept talking about Henry David Thoreau, and I told him that Thoreau wrote his book [“Civil Disobedience”] in jail. If you want to write a book, you go to jail and write it.”
― Juan Williams, Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary

“When Marshall spoke to NAACP youth groups and asked the youngsters what they were going to do when they grew up, the kids answered: “I’m going to be a good butler” or “I hope I might be able to get in the post office.” He thought to himself, That was it for them. He understood he was watching their lives get shut down before they were even grown up. He wanted to unravel this rope that was choking so many.2 Marshall saw the crippling insecurity among those black children as a legal issue.”
― Juan Williams, Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary

“Marshall’s resolve to use sociological studies in the schools cases was rooted in his life experience—as the son of a bright man who never got an education and never became more than a waiter. Marshall saw the same trap still catching many young black people. They were defeated at a young age by limits they accepted about their talents and their right to an education.”
― Juan Williams, Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary