Thurgood Marshall Commemorative Coin Act

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to ask Congress to please join me in cosponsoring H.R. 1433, the Thurgood Marshall Commemorative Coin Act to commemorate the life and legacy of the Honorable Thurgood Marshall, one of America's distinguished Civil Rights leaders and the first black Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.

Like Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and many more, Thurgood Marshall led a civil rights revolution in the twentieth century that forever changed the landscape of American society. Working through the courts to eradicate the legacy of slavery and destroying the racist segregation system of Jim Crow, he had an even more profound impact on race relations than many of his peers in the Movement. As the leader of Legal Defense Fund of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Mr. Marshall won Supreme Court victories breaking the color line in housing, transportation and voting, all of which overturned the `Separate but Equal' apartheid, which was the oppressive reality of American life for Blacks from emancipation to the 1960's. It was Marshall who was the mastermind behind the strategies which won the most important legal case of the century, Brown v. Board in 1954, which ended the legal separation of black and white children in public schools and initiated the dismantling of the legal framework which supported segregation. The success of the Brown case sparked the 1960's Civil Rights Movement.

Marshall's first major case in 1933 desegregated the University of Maryland and initiated his long and distinguished career as the most notable civil rights attorney in American history. Heavily involved with the NAACP, Mr. Marshall navigated through the court system a series of cases to legally challenge the laws that sought to legitimize the denial of constitutionally guaranteed civil rights to African Americans. He was even invited by the United Nations and the United Kingdom to help draft the constitutions of both newly formed Ghana and Tanzania.

As a result of the success of many of his Supreme Court challenges to state sponsored discrimination, President John F. Kennedy appointed Mr. Marshall to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. As a Federal Court judge Thurgood Marshall wrote over 150 decisions including support for immigrants' rights, limiting government intrusion in cases involving illegal search and seizure, double jeopardy, and right to privacy issues. As U.S. Solicitor General, Mr. Marshall won 14 of the 19 cases he argued in front of the Supreme Court on behalf of the government. Through this position he represented and won more cases before the Supreme Court than any other American. Therefore it was befitting that in 1967 Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him to the Supreme Court, making Thurgood Marshall the first African American to be a Supreme Court Justice.

Throughout his tenure as a Supreme Court Justice, Marshall was a strong advocate for equal rights under the law. He strongly believed that integration was the only route to achieving equal protection for all. Once individual rights were accepted, blacks and whites could rise or fall based on their own ability. However, Justice Marshall believed that the Constitution was inherently defective in its acceptance of slavery, and he made it clear that while legal discrimination had ended, there was more to be done to advance educational opportunity for people who had been locked out and to bridge the wide canyon of economic inequity between blacks and whites. Therefore he was a very strong advocate for programs such as Affirmative Action, preferences, set-asides and other race conscious policies.

Although Thurgood Marshall worked most of his life on behalf of the rights of African Americans, he built a structure of individual rights that became the cornerstone of protections for all Americans. He succeeded in creating new protections under law for women, children, prisoners, and the homeless. Justice Marshall ``refused to acquiesce in outdated notions of `liberty', `justice' and `equality,' '' and worked to better them. Therefore, as we now experience the process of appointing a new Supreme Court Justice, let us remember the life and legacy of Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. For his strength and struggle has contributed greatly to American history and his impact on the Supreme Court fully represents the true essence and purpose of our Constitution.

I believe it is most appropriate at this time in our national history to recognize and honor Thurgood Marshall in a special manner. That is why I have introduced a bill to authorize the minting of a special coin in honor of Thurgood Marshall. I submit the text of my proposal legislation for the Congressional Record and ask for the support of its early consideration and passage.