Thurgood Marshall

My hero is Supreme Justice Thurgood Marshall, because of his effort in stopping the discrimination against African Americans and beginning a major part of the civil rights movement. His most important achievement was winning a legal case when he was a lawyer in 1954. Brown vs. Board of Education would determine if schools would continued to be segregated or integrate. Thurgood Marshall is the reason that I, as an African American, can go to a school in the top 4% in the district. He was on the Supreme Court for 24 years and died on January 24 1992.

Before he served on the Supreme Court, Marshall served as legal director of the NAACP(National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). Overturning racial segregation was one of the NAACP’s primary concerns. Marshall’s mentor was Charles Hamilton, who was the first black lawyer to win a Supreme Court case. Charles Hamilton is the one who came up with a long-term strategy for desegregating the schools. Both Thurgood and his mentor working together first focused on graduate and professional schools. They believed that White judges would be more likely to sympathize with the ambitious young Black students in those schools. The two won more and more cases, and they eventually started working on the elementary and high schools.

I don’t know when Thurgood started to think about the issue of segregation in schools. It could have been an issue with him when he first became a lawyer. Thurgood knew he wanted to be a lawyer in 1933 when he attended Howard University. He won the Brown vs. Board of Education case in 1954. So when between 1933 and 1954 did Thurgood Marshall start having feelings of changing the entire school system in the United States? My guess is that he developed feelings for this once sensitive subject when he started working in the Baltimore branch of the NAACP.

Thurgood Marshall is my hero because he paved the way for me to get as good of an education as everyone else. He didn't just fight for Black rights,he fought for all races. I admire him because he didn't just settle at integrating schools, he went on to become the first African American to be a Supreme Court Justice. Thurgood Marshall was a major part of black history and if it wasn't for him I would have an inferior education in comparision to the one I have today.

When I was younger I wanted to be a lawyer, although I knew that my ethinicity would cause me to have to overcome some problems. I once attended the NAACP Saturday School and that's where I heard about Thurgood Marshall. Then I did some research on my own with the use of the internet. Thurgood Marshall’s achievements gave me the confidence to trust in my ability to conquer all the obstacles that people might throw at me, just because I'm Black. Now I'm fifteen and I realize I don't want to pursue being a lawyer. Now I want to be an accountant. No matter what occupation I choose I will still have to deal with racial discrimination, but thanks to Thurgood Marshall I know it won't be impossible to overcome. That is why Thurgood Marshall is my hero.