Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, 1967, in the Oval Office
At a time in this nation, when we are facing the deep disparities in our justice system, often spoken of as "Just-Us"—meaning a system that is only for those who are white, straight and of a certain class; when black and brown Americans are incarcerated by the millions and are murdered by agents of that system who are paid to police our streets and communities; when we are dying in the streets branded as thugs and hoodlums and criminals; when the War on Drugs has become a war on those same citizens of color who now disproportionately fill both private and for profit prisons—we need to marshal our forces to continue to fight to give the word
justice meaning in fact.
A large part of the problem is our refusal to look squarely at the stark reality of what is not a series of unrelated, random outrages, like Mike Brown's murder-by-cop in Ferguson and the failure of the St. Louis grand jury to indict Darren Wilson, or the recent shooting and murder-by-cop of 12-year-old Tamir Rice (add all the names you know to the list). We need to fundamentally change the justice system, from the top down and from the bottom up.
Follow below the fold for more.
Civil rights lawyer and former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall will, for me, always be a symbol of the fight for justice in the courts. Born in Baltimore, Maryland, on July 2, 1908, Thurgood Marshall was the grandson of a slave:
Thurgood Marshall followed his Howard University mentor, Charles Hamilton Houston to New York and later became Chief Counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). During this period, Mr. Marshall was asked by the United Nations and the United Kingdom to help draft the constitutions of the emerging African nations of Ghana and what is now Tanzania. It was felt that the person who so successfully fought for the rights of America's oppressed minority would be the perfect person to ensure the rights of the White citizens in these two former European colonies. After amassing an impressive record of Supreme Court challenges to state-sponsored discrimination, including the landmark Brown v. Board decision in 1954, President John F. Kennedy appointed Thurgood Marshall to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. In this capacity, he wrote over 150 decisions including support for the rights of immigrants, limiting government intrusion in cases involving illegal search and seizure, double jeopardy, and right to privacy issues. Biographers Michael Davis and Hunter Clark note that, "none of his (Marshall's) 98 majority decisions was ever reversed by the Supreme Court." In 1965 President Lyndon Johnson appointed Judge Marshall to the office of U.S. Solicitor General. Before his subsequent nomination to the United States Supreme Court in 1967, Thurgood Marshall won 14 of the 19 cases he argued before the Supreme Court on behalf of the government. Indeed, Thurgood Marshall represented and won more cases before the United States Supreme Court than any other American.
Until his retirement from the highest court in the land, Justice Marshall established a record for supporting the voiceless American. Having honed his skills since the case against the University of Maryland, he developed a profound sensitivity to injustice by way of the crucible of racial discrimination in this country. As an Associate Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall leaves a legacy that expands that early sensitivity to include all of America's voiceless. Justice Marshall died on January 24, 1993.
A media project named in his honor currently is aiding in the dissemination of criminal justice information—
The Marshall Project.
Bill Keller, former executive editor of The New York Times, is now editor-in-chief of the Marshall Project, which has this mission statement:
The Marshall Project is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization founded on two simple ideas:
1) There is a pressing national need for high-quality journalism about the American criminal justice system. The U.S. incarcerates more people than any country in the world. Spiraling costs, inhumane prison conditions, controversial drug laws, and concerns about systemic racial bias have contributed to a growing bipartisan consensus that our criminal justice system is in desperate need of reform.
The recent disruption in traditional media means that fewer institutions have the resources to take on complex issues such as criminal justice. The Marshall Project stands out against this landscape by investing in journalism on all aspects of our justice system. Our work will be shaped by accuracy, fairness, independence, and impartiality, with an emphasis on stories that have been underreported or misunderstood. We will partner with a broad array of media organizations to magnify our message, and our innovative website will serve as a dynamic hub for the most significant news and comment from the world of criminal justice.
2) With the growing awareness of the system’s failings, now is an opportune moment to amplify the national conversation about criminal justice.
We believe that storytelling can be a powerful agent of social change. Our mission is to raise public awareness around issues of criminal justice and the possibility for reform. But while we are nonpartisan, we are not neutral. Our hope is that by bringing transparency to the systemic problems that plague our courts and prisons, we can help stimulate a national conversation about how best to reform our system of crime and punishment.
Clearly, this is not an advocacy organization. However, we need
any and all attempts to stem the tide of public indifference to an untenable, dangerous, inhumane system. The ball is now in the courts of the white voters of America to wake up and see the monster in our midst. As a black American, I am one voice in the 13 percent African-American population. We need more white voices to counteract decades and centuries of depraved injustice. People of color cannot (and should not have to) do this alone. I hope this well-funded effort will help make a dent in the wall of indifference.
People of color have been speaking out, loud and clear, for so long now. I often wonder upon whose ears our voices fall, and are heard and understood, with action taken as a result. Isabel Wilkerson, author of The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, wrote for The Guardian, Mike Brown’s shooting and Jim Crow lynchings have too much in common. It’s time for America to own up:
The "savage" of history has become the "thug" of 2014. Injustice is so banal that we hardly notice it happening.
Not terribly long ago in a country that many people misremember, if they knew it at all, a black person was killed in public every four days for often the most mundane of infractions, or rather accusation of infractions – for taking a hog, making boastful remarks, for stealing 75 cents. For the most banal of missteps, the penalty could be an hours-long spectacle of torture and lynching. No trial, no jury, no judge, no appeal. Now, well into a new century, as a family in Ferguson, Missouri, buries yet another American teenager killed at the hands of authorities, the rate of police killings of black Americans is nearly the same as the rate of lynchings in the early decades of the 20th century.
About twice a week, or every three or four days, an African American has been killed by a white police officer in the seven years ending in 2012, according to studies of the latest data compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. That number is incomplete and likely an undercount, as only a fraction of local police jurisdictions even report such deaths – and those reported are the ones deemed somehow "justifiable". That means that despite the attention given the deaths of teenagers Trayvon Martin (killed by neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman) and Jordan Davis (killed by a white man for playing his music too loud), their cases would not have been included in that already grim statistic – not only because they were not killed by police but because the state of Florida, for example, is not included in the limited data compiled by the FBI.
Even though white Americans outnumber black Americans fivefold, black people are three times more likely than white people to be killed when they encounter the police in the U.S., and black teenagers are far likelier to be killed by police than white teenagers.
One of the strongest voices is that of Michelle Alexander, author of
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, which should be required reading in every school across this nation.
And it's my top pick this season for gift-giving.
If you have never listened to her, please give a listen to a Ted Talk she gave in Ohio last year:
From her book:
In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. So we don’t. Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice system to label people of color “criminals” and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind. Today it is perfectly legal to discriminate against criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans. Once you’re labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination—employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service—are suddenly legal. As a criminal, you have scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow. We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.
During this holiday season, those of you who are not incarcerated, those of you who are not mourning that empty chair at the table, take time out to make a decision about what you can do to help turn this travesty of justice around.
Take action.
Thurgood Marshall once said, "In recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings, we pay ourselves the highest tribute."