PowerPoint; Deadly Force, Thurgood Marshall

Be brown. music. Production and broadcast of PowerPoint is made possible by a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. This is PowerPoint, an information age clearinghouse for news, issues, and ideas that impact the African -American community, the nation, and the world. And now, from Washington, D .C., PowerPoints Ralph Wiley. When people conjure mental images of leaders from the Civil Rights Movement, they usually think of Rosa Parks, Malcolm

X, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But while these giants fought the system, a dynamic NAACP lawyer named Thurgood Marshall changed the system. His brilliant achievements include winning 29 of 32 cases, argued before the Supreme Court, including the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education case, which overturned the separate but equal apartheid of American life. More than 30 years ago, Thurgood Marshall became the first African -American to serve on the Supreme Court. We'll look back at the achievements of Thurgood Marshall with journalists Juan Williams, author of an excellent new book called Thurgood Marshall, American Revolutionary. As we look back, we also find ourselves compelled to wonder what warnings in caveat justice Marshall would bring to us today. Well, to assist us in our historical observation of this complex jurist, we'll be joined later in the hour by Harvard University Law Professor Lani Guineer, author of Lift Every Voice, Turning Civil Rights Setbacks into new visions of

social justice. As we tell the enduring and inspirational story of this great American, we want to hear from you. You can take part in the discussion by calling the PowerPoint Hotline at 1 -800 -989 -8255. That's 1 -800 -989 -8255. PowerPoints look at the life and legacy of Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall begins in a moment. But first, these important headlines from PowerPoint News with Verna Avery Brown. For PowerPoint news and information to empower the community, I'm Verna Avery Brown. An overwhelming majority of Americans responding to the latest Newsweek poll, say, First Lady Hillary Rahm Clinton, is tough enough to take on a race for the U .S. Senate. 86 % say she would be able to withstand criticism from opponents and the news media. Although Mrs. Clinton has not yet said she'd run for the New

York Senate seat, 52 % of Americans believe she really wants to be a senator, but Americans are split over whether she'd make a better senator or a public speaker. A very low turnout Saturday in Nigeria, as National Assembly elections got underway, the elections are part of military leader Abdu Salami Abu Bakar's plan to restore the nation to civilian rule. But voter apathy was widespread in the country of 108 million people, with more voters in the north than in the southern region. The polls were the first chance for Nigerians to elect national representatives under Abdu Bakar's plan to end military rule on May 29. Defense attorneys in trial in Jasper County, Texas face compelling DNA evidence against their client, John King, on trial for the brutal dragging death last June of James Bird Jr. Last Friday, prosecutors presented an FBI DNA expert in 13 articles of blood stain clothing that links King to Bird's murder. A brother of King's co -defendant testified that King was especially proud

of a tattoo on his arm of a black man hanging from a tree. A gang expert testified that dumping Bird's headless torso out in public between a black church and a black cemetery was designed to terrorize the community. Defense attorneys C. Hayden Sonny Kripp spoke with reporters outside the courthouse. I'm not going to really comment on what we're trying to do. It's the evidence is going to be the evidence that it comes in, we're going to do our best to at least put on something that can help save this boy's life if he can. John King and the two other defendants face life in prison or death by lethal injection if convicted. Former black panther Elmer Geronimo Pratt no longer faces a threat of prosecution for murder. He spent 27 years in prison for, but maintains he did not commit. Los Angeles District Attorney Gil Garcetti has decided to drop his case. Although Pratt is free from further prosecution, activists continue their struggle to free others they believe to be political prisoners. Yesterday at a

conference in Washington, D .C., activists gathered to support a new trial for death row inmate Mwia Abu Jamal, sentenced to death for the murder of a Philadelphia police officer. Renown actor Ossi Davis is among those who attended, he spoke with PowerPoints Rashida Johnson. I basically reason for involvement is that I am against the death penalty. So even if it was not a question of guilt or innocence, I don't want people to be killed. But in this particular case, I think Abu deserves a new trial on the basis of evidence has been uncovered and we have to keep agitating until we can get him that new trial. What's your reaction to recent media coverage that strongly suggests that Mwia is guilty and that those supporting his cause are just caught up in his charisma? Well, I've been familiar with the media and heart operas for a very long time. I'm not at all surprised. The capacity to

demonize and to create objects, Mr. Community, will fear is one of the powers that the press has. But the press is not immune to pressure from the community. We can force the press to change the way it sees things too. And we'd like to see the press become not one of the punishes, but one of the ways by which we can bring attention to the ills in our society. Actor Ossi Davis at a political conference in Washington, DC, addressing the inherent inequalities of the criminal justice system as it relates to the poor and people of color. The man who paid $16 ,000 for OJ Simpson memorabilia and then burned it, says he did so as a protest of the criminal justice system. Simpson says he supposes he should be thankful someone paid $16 ,000 towards a $33 .5 million that he was ordered to pay the families of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. But Simpson says the money could have been used to fight AIDS, help sick

children, or even be given to a battered women's shelter. Up next, PowerPoint continues to examine the criminal justice system, but this hour through the legacy of one of the most pre -eminent jurists of the 20th century, the late Thurgood Marshall. Host Ralph Wiley is joined by Juan Williams, author of Thurgood Marshall, American Revolutionary, and noted Harvard University law professor Lani Guineer as they further the dialogue on crime justice and equality for all. You can join the discussion by calling 1 -800 -989 -8255. For PowerPoint news and information to empower the community, I'm Verna Agri Brown. And editorial

ran in the Washington African -American, African -American newspaper after Thurgood Marshall died. It stated, we make movies about Malcolm X. We have a holiday in honor of Dr. King. But every day we live with the legacy of Thurgood Marshall. And during this hour of PowerPoint, we're going to find out how, with Juan Williams, author of Thurgood Marshall, American Revolutionary, we're hoping later in the hour to be joined by Lani Guineer, Harvard Law School professor, and one of Thurgood Marshall's legatees. We also want to be joined by you. Call the PowerPoint hotline if you even know who Thurgood Marshall is. 1 -800 -989 -8255. That's 1 -800 -989 -8255. Welcome, Juan. The office of pleasure to be with you. Thank you. Thurgood Marshall is honored today as someone who brought order to the law as applied to black Americans. But tell us a little about his beginnings, his origins, his

formative years. Can you give us a quick little capsule of how you think they may have shaped and developed them? You know, this is a fascinating point, Ralph, because as a biographer, one of the challenges that I faced in telling his story was trying to understand how this person gets created at the turn of the century. And I'm not talking about now, turn of the next century. I'm talking about the guy born 1908 in Baltimore, Maryland. And yet someone who is a strong integrationist and someone who believes that the government and the law should be on the side of black people. And that black people should have equal rights in a society. And that's not a casual thought, because if you think about it, someone born in 1908, if they're living in the south, is under real oppression and living in strict segregation. And we'll have very little concept of the idea of equality and integration. That would be alien to that mind and that place and time. And if they're living much to the north, even again in the turn of the century America, what they're experiencing is the alienated black experience, where they're one family among a white sea. And maybe they have no political voice, no political power.

But what Thurgood Marshall from the time he's a young kid has this sense of normal being equal rights and integration. So as a biographer, I was curious about, well, how does the kid get that idea? And part of the story has to do with Baltimore, Maryland. Part of the story has to do with his fascinating family. He has one grandfather who served in the Union Navy, another grandfather who went out west with the Buffalo soldiers. Both grandfathers lived in Baltimore, Maryland. One was still a slave at the time of the Civil War, but escaped to Baltimore, Baltimore being a place that Frederick Douglass once described as the one city above all others that I would rather be, because of its strong free black community. And it's a great place for slaves to come because obviously they could easily intermingle with free blacks and just by the color of the skin could not be detected. So as a result, they, these people have political power because Baltimore was a poor city. They had strong economic -based blacks were at the forefront of the caulking and sale -making industry in Baltimore during this period. They had strong religious institutions. And in the party of Lincoln, the Republican Party at that time, they had leadership positions

and leadership posts. And they were putting pressure on the city to integrate schools, but they had founded their own black private schools. This is all in the middle of the 1800s. Thurgood Marshall's grandfather, at one point, Isaiah O .B. Williams, O .B. standing for Olive Branch, is in the top of all the newspapers for complaining about police brutality and the shooting of a black man by a white policeman who enters his home and puts so much pressure on the establishment at that time that they bring the policeman to trial. I'm talking about 1875, Ralph. So you understand how intense this is. And not only does the policeman go to trial, but he's convicted, not of first -degree murder, but of manslaughter and sent to jail. This is unbelievable for that point in American history. And also a good lesson on the more things changed, the more they say, stay the same, just the previous hour we were talking about deadly force in the Al -Majou jalo case. So you're going from Thurgood Marshall there to Thurgood Marshall to become educated as a lawyer. How did he track in that way? And what were some of the disappointments and joys he had in becoming a lawyer? Well, you know what's interesting here is

Marshall's life is so fascinating. He goes to high school with someone like a cab cowboy, the jazz thing. He's grown up in Baltimore. And then he goes to Lincoln University, which was at the time called the black Princeton, because Princeton had been founded by the Presbyterian's Princeton in Princeton, New Jersey. And then Lincoln had been founded as a school for elite young black men, kind of the counterpart to Princeton. So it's called the black Princeton Lincoln was at the time. And Marshall is there and he runs into Langston Hughes. Hughes is an older student coming back to school. And Hughes begins to put pressure on Marshall to say, hey, you're a big man on campus, always talking about girls and fraternities and football games. Why don't you use your voice for something a little more powerful? And why don't you talk about the fact that you can't use the bathroom in downtown Baltimore? Can't go to a restaurant. Why don't you talk about the fact there are no black people on the faculty here at Lincoln? And Marshall, Thurgood Marshall, being 18, 19 years old, he's like, hey, man, get out of my face. I don't need this. I came to school to have a good time to meet some women, join the fraternity, have a few drinks, you know. And eventually he gets turned around.

Pressure coming not only from Hughes, but from others and his own personal experience, where he can't even go to the movie theater and sit where he wants to sit. And pretty soon he's at the forefront of efforts to bring black people onto the faculty at Lincoln. And it's a success. And for the first time, his consciousness, his social consciousness, his political consciousness is being raised. But you talked about his legal education. He can't go to the University of Maryland Law School because they don't accept colored folks. And so he's forced, and his mother is forced, to pawn her wedding ring, and he goes down the road 40 miles here to Washington DC to Howard University Law School. And when he shows up, he's under the tutelage of a legendary figure, Charles Hamilton Houston. Houston had been in World War I, had seen the kind of discrimination and the terrible, terrible treatment of black souls. And the soldiers in the U .S. military were being court -martialed unfairly. Houston had stepped in, even though he didn't have legal training as father as a lawyer here in Washington. He had acted as representative for some of these black lawyers to try to make sure they were early tried. And then he had gone on to Harvard University Law School, where he was on the law review, and then come out and looked at the condition

of black lawyers throughout the country. And realized quickly, this is 1920s, I'm talking about, there are only a thousand black lawyers in the whole country. Only a hundred of them working in the south where most black people live. And the quality of work being done by black lawyers at the time was terribly bad. I mean, inferior. The judges would say they could instantly identify work by black lawyers because they didn't understand the precedence and the misspellings and the shot. So Houston decided he was going to do something that was at the time revolution. He was going to take Howard University Law School, which had been at the moment sort of a nighttime part -time operation with part -time faculty, and make it into a daytime full -time operation that was going to be accredited. And he did it. Over many objections from people who said, hey, you know, I got a job. I can't go full -time and from faculty who were lawyers around who used the money they got from teaching to supplement their income. Houston said, no, we want a full -time operation because a lawyer who's not a social architect is a social parasite. That was his kind of saying, his motto. And then in the class beginning in 1930, here comes Young Thurgood Marshall. Young Thurgood Marshall still hoping to have

his consciousness raised, still looking for really his role in American life. And he comes into this class and Houston says to them, gentlemen, look to your left, look to your right, two of the three of you won't be here to graduate. And it's worse than that, only six of the 36 will graduate in three years. And Marshall becomes the top student in the class, becomes like an associate to Houston. And when a man named George Crawford is accused of murdering two white women across the river in Virginia, Lee'sburg, Virginia, he flees to Massachusetts because they were lynching black people over there. This is the 1930s. And Houston and Marshall get involved in an effort to stop an extradition appeal by Virginia. They're unable to do it. But once he's brought back, they get the NAACP to support them and they then defend Crawford. And really put on a dazzling defense that hadn't been seen at that point in which they argue that because there are no black people on the jury, this is not a fair trial, they argue that the prosecution has introduced no evidence, no witnesses. And you know, they are unsuccessful in preventing

a conviction. But nonetheless, they celebrated because they didn't, they didn't, they were able to stop the jury from sentencing Crawford to death. And at that time, as Marshall later said to me, I had interviews with Marshall over a six month period. He said to me, you know, at that time, they were lynching black folks. And the idea that they, the jury would say that this black, they had sufficient question in their mind, they would say this black man deserves a life sentence, not the death penalty, was evidence that we had moved them. And of course, it was an all white jury. And it also shows how Houston and Marshall developed their relationship with the NAACP. We're talking with Juan Williams, the author of Thurgood Marshall, American Revolutionary. We're talking about the late Supreme Court justice, who argued 32 cases, I believe, according to Juan's research, before the Supreme Court, and 129 of them, including the famous landmark Brown versus Board of Education, desegregation decision that we're going to get to later. We want to hear from you. You've got to have questions about one of the great

men in the history of African American life here in America. 1 -800 -989 -8255. Call and make your PowerPoint with Juan Williams. And speaking of that, a lot of people, that's what they remember. If they remember anything, they say, oh yes. Oh yes, he was, he was a guy that won the 1954 case, Brown, V Board education. Many later became a Supreme Court justice, but in point of fact, even that was a long process, which we'll get to. And he had strategies about how to desegregate through cases. But I mean, also interested in his criminal case career, you started talking about it. There was a case, a famous case, and it really talks about how justice has always been not blind in America. In Oklahoma, called the Lions case. Could you set that up and tell us about that case in Thurgood Marshall's career? Sure. This is a fabulous case, Brown, in which a black man is charged with killing a farm family out in Hugo, Oklahoma. And it is a vicious

murder in which the family is not only slaughtered, but the property burned and their bones charred. A little boy hit in a closet, and he really did not see the murderers. He saw just the glimpse of them. And at first, the police arrest two inmates who've escaped from a nearby state penitentiary. And they were getting illegal furloughs from his penitentiary. Is that not right? And raising all sorts of hells. That's right. They were getting illegally furloughed, and then they escaped. They would go off, and they would have held good time in town, a good time in terms of causing pain and suffering to people. And so as this was now getting out of control because of this murder situation, the press was getting a hold of it. The governor realizes quickly that he is going to have to pay a political price. Because they have been getting out on his watch. Check it out. So what happens is he sends one of his operatives to town. And what they do is they get these two escapees who have been arrested for these murders

out of town, out of state. In fact, send them down to Mexico. And then they decide they've got to find a fall guy. And the fall guy is Mr. Lyons. A black man. Who happens to be black? He's partially retarded. And just a guy who's a farmer. A real life to kill a mockingbird sort of case. Absolutely. And what was the upshot of it all on? Well, the very good Marshall comes to town at the urging of Roscoe Dungee who was then running the black dispatch, the leading black newspaper in Oklahoma. And who saw this case as a setup and asked Marshall and NAACP for their assistant, Marshall comes to town. And gets the case going. Is able to get the father of the woman who had been killed to testify that he does not believe that Lyons had anything to do with this murder. Thurgood Marshall is able to persuade the judge and jury that there is reasonable doubt. But because of political pressures being put on the judge and the jury,

Lyons is convicted and given the death sentence. Marshall is tremendously bothered by this for a long time, takes it to the Supreme Court, tries to get the confessions thrown out. There were two confessions, one in which the upcharred bones of the murder victims were thrown onto Mr. Lyons' lap. After he had been forced to stay awake for three days and not allowed to use the bathroom or to eat, he was scared stiff. Nonetheless, a second confession was allowed by the Supreme Court and Lyons was sentenced to death, later commuted to a life sentence. Marshall was forever haunted by this case, thought that it was one of the grossest injustices he had ever seen. As for other people, because isn't it true that many of the white residents of that town also believed that he was innocent, including the father of the victim, the wife, who, according to your research, later as a white man joined the NAACP. In protest, because he wanted to show support not only for Lyons, but for Thurgood Marshall and for the work that had been done, because he saw the injustice and saw that there was no evidence that

Lyons had anything to do with this case. Now what year was that one? This is I think 43, 44. I'm not sure. But it might as well have been yesterday. This is PowerPoint. I'm Ralph Wiley. We're talking with Juan Williams, the author of Thurgood Marshall, American Revolutionary. You can join our discussion by calling 1 -800 -989 -8255. That's 1 -800 -989 -8255. We're going to break from talking about Thurgood Marshall just for a second and talk about Thurgood Marshall's book, Juan. Many times African -American authors with African -American subjects have difficulty with the placement of their books in bookstores. One wouldn't think that would be the case with you being a Washington Post writer, Washington Post magazine writer, very well regarded, and Thurgood Marshall being Thurgood Marshall. But you've had difficulty, is that right? It's been a real lesson for me. Going to bookstores, especially the big bookstores, and it's just nowhere to be seen. I mean, they have all the newly released biographies out.

It's not on the rack with them. You see everything else up there. And then you go in the back, and I'm lucky if I see it in either African -American studies or legal studies or maybe ethnic studies. But it's nowhere that someone who's coming and looking for a book would come across it. And similarly, if you go through the airport or the bus station or the train station or the mall, when those kind of bookstores are there, again, it's just absent. And I've said to people, the buyers and everybody else, why is it that a book like that? And they say, well, those aren't the kind of books that sell in malls. People want books that are kind of escapist and fun or self -help or something like that. And at some point, you just, as a writer, I mean, I've put seven years of my life in this. This is mid -career for me. This was a huge investment. And it is daunting. It really is. Now, some of the independent bookstores have been much better and much kinder to me. And I think what they think there is that if someone suggests the book, if they know their clientele and they can do what they call

hand -to -hand selling, that then they can say, hey, this is a good book, you should check it out. And again, part of it is a process by which I think lots of people don't know Thurgood Marshall, don't know about his role in history. So this is an opportunity, I would think, to have your mind raised and open, your eyes open. But too many people, I think, are quick to say it's not about, you know, sports or an entertainment figure. And as a result, unfortunately, in our current culture, something like that gets pushed upside. Well, the book deserves to be there, not only because of this subject matter. We're talking about Thurgood Marshall, American Revolutionary, new book by one, Williams by Times books, out from Times books. It deserves to be there. It deserves to be on risers in the front of stores, not only because of this subject, but because of the meticulous research that one Williams has brought to this subject. And let's talk about that. Let's talk about the strategy for desegregation. And then later we can talk about the impact of desegregation. The strategy that Thurgood Marshall had in his mission, seemed to be, according to your search again, that he would take these cases

where a black person was trying to get into a white institution, usually a school, and he would argue, there is no equal school. So until you build an equal school, you have to let him in, University of Texas, University of Maryland, wherever it is. Could you tell us a little bit about that strategy? You know, remember, we had to go back to 1896 to the Place of E. Ferguson decision, which said that separate but equal was constitutional. What they mean by separate but equal is you could have separate facilities and resources for black people and white people, as long as they were theoretically equal facilities. Of course, that was a myth, that's a lie. The lie was, it was separate, that's true, but what was the lie was there was no equal, it was separate and inferior, very much unequal. And so what Marshall did, in fact, just two years out of law school, was to go back to the University of Maryland. Remember, I told you that he couldn't go to the University of Maryland because they didn't accept colored people as they would call that. And what happened was he said to a young fellow who had gone to Amherst and had great grades, will you apply the University of Maryland law school? The young fellow does, he's rejected,

the President University sends a letter saying, here's why you're rejected because of the color of your skin. Marshall makes it a case, takes it to court, and much to his surprise wins the case because the judge says the University of Maryland doesn't have a law school educate black people. You can't even argue that yet we have this facility over here and we're going to make it better and give us time to work on it, they didn't have any. Using that same strategy, then Houston and Marshall take it on the road to Missouri, to Oklahoma, to Texas. And now they start knocking down the pins because they're knocking down graduate and professional schools across the country who have inferior or less than equal facilities to educate black people in nursing journalism, medicine and the rest. And this is on their way to the famous Brown decision in 1954. We're going to go to line 4 JL at Affiliate Station KTSU in Houston. JL, you have a question for Juan Williams or a comment? Yes, Juan, how are you on? Fine, thank you, sir. Juan, I'm just looking at the scene today and it seems

that what is quite apparent that we have the same problems that they had in Marshall's day with respect to the racial situation. And as a matter of fact, it might be getting worse. And I was just wondering if we had the same kind of social consciousness on the part of black lawyers today. Did Mr. Marshall, what effect did he have with respect to the social consciousness of black lawyers today? Thank you, Frederick. Juan, can you answer that? Sure, you know, he had a tremendous impact. I think Thurgood Marshall, among black lawyer, stands as an icon. And I think it's justly earned. You think about it, Thurgood Marshall, as head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Director Council, for the time, you know, remember, he goes up and he replaces Houston by the 1939 -1940. And then he is there until 1960 and during that 20 -year period, Marshall, by using the kind of legal strategies we were talking about earlier,

breaks down segregation and transportation in housing and in the use of restrictive covenants to kept black people from buying property in certain neighborhoods. And the use of the all -white primary. So he makes a tremendous progress that I think is still honored by black lawyers across America today. Well, Lonnie Guineer will join us in our next half hour on PowerPoint. We're talking with Juan Williams about Thurgood Marshall, American Revolutionary. We'll leave it to you as to whether there should be a question mark behind that Revolutionary or not. Internet services for PowerPoint are provided by World African Network, offering news, information, sports, and entertainment for African and African -American communities through broadband and new media technologies. The web address is www .wainonline .com That's www .wainonline .com

This is Public Radio and you're listening to PowerPoint with Ralph Wiley. And now, in honor of Black History Month, PowerPoint presents Who Am I? Who Am I? I was the first black woman to fly high in the blue skies in the United States. I was recently honored with a postage stamp.

How well do you know Black History? If you know the answer to our Who Am I? Who is called 1 -888 -682 -6500. That's 1 -888 -682 -6500. If you're first with the correct answer, you'll win one of two books. I dream a world by Brian Lanker or Black Genius by Ellen Brown. This is PowerPoint. I'm Ralph Wiley. We're talking to author Juan Williams about his new book, Thurgood Marshall, American Revolutionary. You can join us by calling 1 -800 -989 -8255. And we're joined this half -hour by Harvard Law Professor Lani Guinear, author of Lift Every Voice, turning a civil rights setback into a new vision of social justice, which are words that really could have come right out

of Thurgood Marshall's mouth or do you agree with that, Lani? Well, I'm not sure that Justice Marshall and I have exactly the same view of the most effective ways of moving the discussion forward at this point. Certainly, when he was alive and certainly when he was head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, he was in the forefront as a civil rights advocate and particularly as a litigator. And part of the theme of my book is suggesting that while the lawyers played a really important role in opening up opportunities that much of what they accomplished could never have been done if there wasn't also a grassroots movement to back them up. And I think certainly one Williams book demonstrates this as to other contemporary accounts. Justice Marshall was not always comfortable with the grassroots nonviolent activities even of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. So there may have

been some tension between his advocacy in the courts and the need or the recognition for a two -prong or maybe even a three -prong. There's no question that Marshall was a complex man, a man driven off and by ego, a flawed man one might even say. Not only Martin Luther King did he have problems with and disagree with and sort of even belittle, but also Mr. Dubois, who shared an office with him. He had not much to say to him and Malcolm X, why my goodness, there was no redeeming quality to the man at all, in spite of the fact that in a symbolic sense, here we have a man coming out of penitentiary and becoming a ready -retition. That's admirable in and of itself. We have Muhammad Ali coming out of Malcolm X, we have roots coming out of Malcolm X. But for some reason, Justice Marshall did not have much use for the grassroots struggle. Juan, was this a class issue, a leader's issue or personal issue from Justice Marshall?

You know, I don't know that I would agree with that. I think that in fact, I think what we forget in this era is, you know, like in 1959, I think it's Jet Magazine asked, it's readership, who is the preeminent black civil rights leader of our time? The answer is not Malcolm X or Dr. King, it's Thurgood Marshall and it's not because of Marshall's victories in the courtroom. Marshall is also a guy who was traveling around as the number one fundraiser in small towns, small southern towns for the NAACP. And when people had a legal problem, I'm not just talking about law suits and divorces. I'm talking about where they had the sense that the southern sheriff was on their neck and that people were in jail and that there was a lynch mob set upon them. They were going to Marshall for help and Marshall would send lawyers from NAACP lawyers to assist and the cry that would go up was Thurgood's coming. So I think Thurgood Marshall had a real connection to the gray ass roots. Now when you talk about people marching though and protesting in the likes of Dr. King, I think Marshall's perspective was more one that said, you

know what, if we get into court and we can win the case, that will change the law for all time. And he was very worried about young black people especially getting caught in jails under the control of these southern bigoted sheriffs. And so that was what, for instance, if you think about King's boycott bus boycott down in Montgomery in 55, it doesn't end until Marshall wins a Supreme Court case that says segregation on those bus lines is illegal. So Marshall's perspective as the lawyers always, let's go to the court and get it done, you can give their best speech, you can possibly give and lift everybody's spirit. But do you really change anything? Do they go back to a different America as a result of the speech from his perspective, the answer was no, let's change the law and we'll change it now and for all generations. When does true valid advocacy begin, Lonnie, in your opinion? Well, I'm not in any way challenging the advocacy that is done by able lawyers in court such as Justice Thurgood Marshall. What I'm suggesting is that lawyers in general, and I would include Justice Marshall when he was a litigator in particular,

tend to overemphasize the importance of litigation and of the lawyer as the expert and as the leader, and tend to diminish or perhaps not appreciate sufficiently the importance of having a grassroots base that is mobilized not only to support the lawyer in terms of providing evidence or testimony or courage to be the plaintiff in the lawsuit, but also once the case is won, the case is not going to be enforced simply by the courts. The case also has to be enforced by winning over a public opinion and by having an activist grassroots base that is out there being vigilant and monitoring what's going on. And I really think this is a multi -dimensional struggle, it's about grassroots advocacy, it's about grassroots militancy, and it's about very able legal advocates. It would seem to be a synthesis, would be the best idea. We're going to go to

PowerPoint affiliate KTSU in Houston, Texas. Frederick has a very interesting question. Frederick? Yes, a question is to one, in your research of Mr. Marshall, is it true that he turned in information or turned in members of the Black Panther Party to the FBI? And Lanny Grinner, if you could state the title of your book, I would appreciate it. Okay, let's go with the question to one. On first, Lanny's book is called Lift Every Voice, turning a civil rights set back into a new vision of social justice. It is a Simon and Schuster book, Frederick. Now, this is very interesting. Marshall's relationship with Hoover. Oh, it's fascinating. And for the first time in my book, you can read about it in detail because I got the FBI files open so you can see the whole story in one place. What you discover quickly is that initially these two are adversaries in which Marshall is accusing Hoover of not doing enough to protect the rights of Black people down South. Black people were calling the NAACP and Marshall and saying, hey, we've got this problem

and we're being lynched, we're being attacked, intimidated. And the FBI said, we can't do anything. And Marshall's putting pressure on the Attorney General in the President of the United States saying, you need to talk to Jagger Hoover because somehow the FBI is good at stopping liquor running and everything else, but they can't deal with the rights of Black people. Hoover gets upset and gets a meeting with Marshall in that meeting what they discover is they have something in common. Marshall does not want the NAACP to be attacked as a front for communist activity activity. And Hoover wants to know about any inkling of any activist or left -wing activity that might be inside the NAACP. They start sharing information secretly. It's not known to Marshall's NAACP colleagues at the time. And Marshall does give reports, especially on one South Carolina NAACP activist that has ties to later to communist and to Cuba, to Hoover. So that kind of information is straight. He does not give any information as the caller's, Frederick was suggesting about SNCC activist or anybody down the line. Black Panthers, I

think, is what Black Panthers specifically. But that might explain his public decrying of the likes of a Malcolm X or even a Martin Luther King. Yes, much distance as possible from people who were performing in the Black grassroots when you're not so particular as to who's standing next to you. Well, I think that, you know, what's difficult to understand here is that later when Mars, because of his context, Marshall at one point is told that Hoover is spying and wiretapping Martin Luther King Jr. And he calls King. Marshall calls King. So I mean, it's clear that his sympathies are with King. And King brushes them all. And King says it doesn't matter to me. Let them wiretapped all they want, you know. But what you see is that Marshall is very concerned that the movement not be stopped by remember segregationists who were all the time complained to NAACP. You were nothing but a bunch of northern agitators funded by communist and left wing activists. And he was trying to say, no, we are Black Americans. And in fact, an integrated group of Americans, but Black Americans, principally, who are concerned about our legitimate rights and asking you as people and as law enforcement officials to protect our

rights. This is PowerPoint. I'm Ralph Wiley. You can join our discussion with author Juan Williams, who has a new book, Thurgood Marshall, American Revolutionary, by calling 1 -800 -989 -8255. Also, we have on the phone, Lani Guineer, author of Lift Every Voice, turning a civil rights setback into a new vision of social justice. Lani is also a Harvard Law School professor. And of course, we remember her rather bizarre dance with President Clinton when she was clearly, clearly the most qualified person for position, but somehow was labeled with all sorts of things that we won't go into here. But we will go into the Brown V Board of Education case. Lani, I want to ask you, Lani, the great irony here is that the lawyers who argued that case were trained in segregated institutions, and they won the case, and then they got integration

supposedly. But now we have re -segregated sort of, I don't know how, but maybe you can explain it to us. Well, I certainly wouldn't claim to have a coherent explanation of the very complicated history post -Brown, but I would like to use the Brown V Board of Education case as an example of the thesis that I'm trying to put forward. I think the lawyers were too sanguine. I think the lawyers, when Justice Marshall won the Brown case in 1954, he basically thought, you know, and many others that the fight was over, and then they had to go back and convince the Supreme Court to implement the decision, and the Supreme Court said, well, you can implement it, but with all deliberate speed. And even then, they had to go back and fight case by case in various Southern courtrooms just to get the Supreme Court's decision, which had already been decided, implemented. And I think part of what happened in

the post -Brown era is that many people began to believe, and Juan Williams said it well earlier, that their rights were being protected by the courts. And therefore, the individual citizen, the community, the collective voice didn't have to be as active because the courts were already now on their side. And there's a very interesting thesis by a professor at the University of Chicago, he wrote a book called The Hollow Hope, in which he basically argues that oftentimes, not always, but oftentimes, when you win a legal battle, you lose the war. Because the lawyers and the plaintiffs become somewhat accommodated or co -opted by their victory, and are less vigilant than they need to be in terms of mobilizing the collective voice of the people to make sure that the continuing struggle is in fact waged. And that most civil rights matters, most

struggles, are not simply a single -generation long. You really have to prepare for the next generation to take on the fight. And that's where I think the lawyers, and I would include Justice Marshall in this, I would include myself in this, I was one of the lawyers for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, long after their good marshal left, but that many of us failed to prepare the second generation to take on the fight. And we thought we were going to win the battle by winning a legal case before the court, and we failed to really generate enough interest and energy in the larger community to continue the fight. You know what I think is that you have to sort of separate it out by time frame. If you think back to Marshall's experience, you must remember that there was even back in the 1920s, a Margold report being done for the NAACP suggesting, hey, you've got to attack separate but equal as we were talking about earlier. And then Marshall comes on the scene, and he has success in the Murray case in Baltimore time, and then he has success in other areas. And he is

very incremental and very careful about building this record so that as he goes to the next court, when we can say, well, I've got a precedent decision here and there. But what you see is that the lawyers, in fact, create a social revolution, that they turn separate but equal on its head by 54 when they get the court to say that segregation is unconstitutional. But with that effort, what you get is people saying, you know, we have a higher level of expectation now for social change than we ever had before, and you get things like young people, young people in the late 50s, getting energized. You get little rock, central high school happen, you get Marshall getting their Marshall out, putting pressure on President Eisenhower, getting involved in the political arena so that Eisenhower has to send the 101st Airborne into little rock to get those nine black children in there. And then you get Marshall as this sort of activist in this activist phase that I think people sometimes lose touch with, but he raised expectations for whole generation that then takes to the streets. All these things are excellent points because Marshall, I don't know if co -opted is the right word, but he was, he became solicitor general, he became Supreme Court justice. Blessy versus Ferguson was a Supreme Court case. If everyone had

stopped on let's say our side of that case, you're trying to overturn it and people are relaxed after that on the other side, maybe that's how it happened in the first place, this constant pounding. So to think that in 1954, once the case was won, there could be this sort of sigh of relief after this long campaign. Well obviously it was a mistake because those students, those students that went to central high were all very well spoken, very well prepared. Now if you go to that same high school or one nearby, you know, it would be difficult. Well, you're difficult to find the same quality of student. Well, one of the things that's truly striking is that if you look at the time when Marshall goes on the court in 67, there was a higher rate of integration in America's public schools than there is today. And the reason for that is things that those lawyers could not have anticipated demographic change. For example, you have white flight from the cities to the suburbs. In fact, there are good Marshall when he's on the Supreme Court later tries to allow for inter jurisdictional busting of children from suburban to urban areas. The Supreme Court rules against it. You have more minorities in the country in terms of, for instance, now we have as many young Hispanics as young black people in the country, Hispanics are more segregated in terms of education than

black folks are right now. This things were not anticipated, but the larger point is here is Marshall again at every juncture. It seems to me playing a key role in terms of trying to change the conversation about race in the society. And I think sometimes we fail to appreciate those efforts. Well, if anything, he might be seen for not replacing himself. That's something we don't do because he was getting older. If we're going to be honest, by the time he got to the 60s Supreme Court, he's getting older. It can no longer be sort of the night in shining armor on the steed if you're having trouble staying up there. But Lonnie, what would you think? Would you hesitate to blame, put any blame on Justice Marshall for not replacing himself? How would you see that? Well, absolutely not. I don't think it's his responsibility to replace himself. He has to take the baton as far as he can during his lifetime. What I am arguing is that the vision of the lawyers and even Justice Marshall, even the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, even myself, may have not been an adequate vision for the kind of sustained social change that was really necessary. Even the question whether the crime for

a quote -unquote integration with an adequate explanation of the problems of African Americans, that crime for integration became co -opted into a very placid approach of tokenism. That as long as a single black or a couple of black people were allowed into a previously segregated institution, then that now is considered a so -called integrated institution because it doesn't formally. This is Lonnie Gwinnier speaking. Sorry to cut you off Lonnie. We're talking to her and one William's author of Thurgood Marshall, American Revolutionary. This is PowerPoint. We'll return. Here's what's coming your way next week on PowerPoint. They called him the Duke because in the world of black music he was royalty. Next time on PowerPoint, Duke Ellington's granddaughter Mercedes Ellington joins us to talk about and listen to the music of the great Duke Ellington. And what was Paris like in the jazz age? All that and PowerPoint

news with Werner Avery Brown. Join us. This is PowerPoint. I'm Ralph

Wiley. We're talking with one William's author of Thurgood Marshall, American Revolutionary and Lonnie Gwinnier, Harvard Law School Professor and author of Lift Every Voice, turning a civil rights setback into a new vision of social justice. Let's talk about civil rights challenges we face in our modern world. Lonnie, what would you say were our most pressing issues and is there anything we can learn from studying Thurgood Marshall's life to apply to these challenges today? Well, I certainly think that the pressing problem of race is still with us and that in fact the boys had it right when he said the problem of the 20th century was the problem of the color line. I think the issue, however, is not just trying to fix this advantage, fees of the people of color and particularly African Americans. I think that the challenge for African Americans is to demonstrate that by freeing them white people will be freeing themselves as well. Part of the challenge is to reframe the civil rights debate so

that it's no longer seen as simply a discussion about whether African Americans have been specifically disadvantaged and whether therefore they are entitled to some kind of remedy. But to see the problems of African Americans is something that I call the miners canary a signal that the problem is not with the canary, which is simply much more alert to the toxicity in the atmosphere. The problem is with the atmosphere in the minds that is affecting everyone. Wonderful analogy. We're going to go to Andrew at Affiliate Station KTSU in Houston, Texas. Andrew, you have a question for Juan. Yes, I do and nice to be on and want thanks for sharing your time with us. If you could, could you relate what sort of things you had to do to collect the information for the book? And I know that Justice Marshall was a little more certain to talk about certain items and also I'm interested in when the book was actually made available to the public last year.

My library got it. I think in January, and I visit the shelves often, but I was surprised to see it then was happy it was there. And then finally, Lonnie tied into the question that she was talking about just a bit ago. The Frederick Douglass Moon Court problem, which I know you may be familiar with, Lonnie, is related to a hotwood case that's coming out of Texas, which is a reverse discrimination question. The Frederick Douglass folks have put a little twinge to it and allow a black bar association to actually donate the scholarship funds. But the question is, is this diversity and is the diversity narrowly tailored to meet those ends? And I appreciate if you all can answer. I'll hang up and listen. Thank you, Andrew. Let's start with Juan. Well, I think you're exactly right. Andrew, when you say that Marshall was reticent to talk, you know, he felt that he'd been burned by the press in many ways. He felt, in fact, out of touch, you know, Jimmy Carter at one point, he suggested that he step down. He had become isolated on a court that was moving to the right in the

Rehnquist years. His only liberal ally was Bill Brennan. He had become less active in terms of reaching out. This is something Ralph Wally was talking about before. Maybe he would have done better to leave the court earlier. But he felt, gosh, he'd been dealing with physical infirmities. He'd stood up and been arguing on Bucky busing, stopped the death penalty in this country at one point. It absolutely instrumental in terms of Roe v. Wade and the structure of making sure that abortion remained legal in the society. And here were liberal people saying, no, it's time for you to go. He felt, look, he was there as a path breaker on the court. And, you know, Ralph used the word co -opted early because he ends up a solicitor general and a member of the Supreme Court. But at the time, the civil rights movement felt grateful that there was finally a black voice there represented at the highest etch lines of Americans, this legal society. So Marshall was feeling a little beat up and I must add, he was also feeling a little out of touch in terms of where the black community was going. Because when he saw that people were doing things with creating the king, how they et cetera, and, you know, all this celebration of Malcolm X, he felt, gosh, you know, people don't remember what I did. And people somehow seem to think that I'm just sitting up here as this overweight guy, this older person on the court, a member of the establishment,

without appreciating the passion that he had put into all of his efforts. So he was reluctant to talk to me. He had entered into a book contract with Carl Rowan. That fell apart when Rowan was focusing on the Lions case, which Ralph and I discussed earlier. And Marshall did not want to reveal the contents of the judicial conference where just the judges are sitting around the table. He said, the first black, Justice of the Supreme Court, not going to have his lips flapping. I'm going to keep my secrets. And that's when the things fell apart. Eventually he gave me a call. I traveled all over the country. I talked to more than 150 people went to presidential archives, to African American research archives, the Amistad library down in Tulane and New Orleans, up to Moreland Spingon here in Washington, DC to the Shamburg in New York. I went to talk to people all over this country in order to bring this story together. And you did a really good job of research. One is no doubt about that and in structuring the story. Lonnie, what about this Hopwood issue? Well, I'm not familiar with the Frederick Douglass move court brief. But I think that the whole issue of Hopwood and the whole issue of race, as it is framed by current court and

legal reasoning, is a real injustice when you think about the vision that Thurgood Marshall was trying so passionately to implement. The issue was not whether race per se and race as this intrinsic social construct meaning it's something that you can't do anything about but on the other hand it doesn't have any real biological validity. That what Marshall was basically arguing is that we have used as a society racial constructs to disadvantage a particular group to stigmatize that group. And what has happened instead is that the Supreme Court has said the use of race as race, whether it is to stigmatize or to benefit, is not allowed except when Natalie Taylor then justified by a compelling state interest. And I think that in a way that goes back to my earlier point, that while Marshall won the battle, he lost the war. Okay,

well that's going to be the last word from Lonnie Gweneer. We'd like to thank her. We'd like to thank Juan Williams, the author of Thurgood Marshall, American Revolutionary. And we'd like to say that if we don't denounce what deserves to be denounced, we will be guilty of treason in the eyes of history. This is PowerPoint. I'm Ralph Wiley. To order audio cassette tapes of tonight's program or any past edition of PowerPoint, please call PowerPoint at 1 -888 -682 -6500. That's 1 -888 -682 -6500. PowerPoint was written and produced by Tony Regusters and directed by Tom Woodward. Associate producers for PowerPoint include Eric Lewis and Tony LaStrap. PowerPoint news is produced and anchored by Verna Avery Brown. PowerPoint's NPR technical director is Neil T. Vault. Assistant producers include K. Marshall and Rashida Johnson. Legal services for

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