Martin Luther King And Thurgood Marshall
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Apr 4, 2011
A couple of nights ago I watched a stage presentation called Thurgood, where Laurence Fishburne portrayed the civil rights lawyer and first black Supreme Court judge in a one man show. It was very well done and very entertaining, and I think we got a very nice view of what Justice Marshall was really like.
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During the presentation, there was an alluding to conversations Martin Luther King, Jr used to have with Marshall on how to achieve equal rights. Dr. King believed that nonviolent protests were the way to go; Mr. Marshall believed that one needed to fight bad laws with other laws. As it turns out, both were right, both suffered wins and losses and both would be amazed to see how little they each really achieved in today's world.
Marshall argued Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954 and won; now 57 years later many communities across the country, especially in North Carolina, are going back to segregated schools, saying desegregation doesn't work for them and it doesn't work for black people and it's too costly in today's environment. Even here in Syracuse come schools are looking at segregating classes, although more towards separating boys and girls from each other; still, in my mind, segregation is segregation.
We also have communities looking to take away rights of immigrants that were granted by the Constitution and take away rights of unions that were fairly negotiated and supposedly protected by the NLRB. Marshall and King have to be rolling in their graves on this last one, as King's last speech was in support of a union.
King would also be upset by the fact that he marched and protested for equal rights in voting, yet minorities don't bother to take the time to vote. He and Marshall fought for education and now minorities don't do well in school and often don't go to school. Just look at dropout rates and rates of unexcused absence, and of course test scores.
I'm not sure that what we have today lives up to the legacy of either Mr. Marshall or Dr. King, who was assassinated 43 years ago today. Did he really go through all he did, and did Justice Marshall fight for all he fought for, so we could have what we've ended up with today? Can we say we've reached an equal footing when the country's unemployment level goes down, yet black unemployment goes up?
I think not.
Copyright protected by Digiprove © 2011 Mitch Mitchell 
**He and Marshall fought for education and now minorities don’t do well in school and often don’t go to school.**
While this may be true for blacks it is not true for ALL minorities. The Asian-Americans as a group generally out perform their peers. My son will be graduating this year as the Valedictorian of his HS.
Like you pointed out, these guys fought for voting rights but the voting turn out remains poor. (well, that is something that is common among all groups).
At what point do we stand up and say, hey let’s take responsibility for ourselves. I am not saying that prejudice is not there, but I know people in my community who use it as an excuse to stay average or below, and I know those among minorities that succeed regardless.
I love what Denzel Washington said when asked what he thought about the fact that he had been nominated for an Oscar eleven times (I believe) without ever winning one. (the interviewer impying the race card) “Al Pachino has been nominated 13 times. Who does he have to blame?”
Actually Rasheed, did you know that there are only statistics for Asians in 23 states across the country? There isn’t a significant enough population figure for the other states, which I find interesting.
As for the other, I don’t disagree with you, but let’s look at India as a great comparison. With all the successful people there, the overwhelming number are poor, just like in the United States, and the darker the skin in India, the worse off they are, just like in America. For that matter, the same goes for Mexico, Brazil and Puerto Rico as well, though they’d rather we didn’t know that.
So yes, people do need to take responsibility for themselves and try to achieve, yet they still don’t need anyone else working hard against them while they’re doing it. After all, there’s still a lot more of the majority than there are of the minority, which is why they use those terms. lol Overall though, I stick with my statement that America and the people of the country, minority or not, haven’t quite lived up to what Dr. King wanted, and at least black people haven’t quite kept up with what Justice Marshall fought for either.