Thurgood Marshall

Thurgood Marshall, 1976, is politely unimpressed by your argument and about to rip you a new one.

“”America must get to work. In the chilled climate in which we live, we must go against the prevailing winds. We must dissent from the indifference. We must dissent from the apathy. We must dissent from the fear, the hatred, and the mistrust. We must dissent from a nation that buried its head in the sand waiting in vain for the needs of its poor, its elderly, and its sick to disappear and just blow away. We must dissent from a government that has left its young without jobs, education, or hope. We must dissent from the poverty of vision and timeless absence of moral leadership. We must dissent, because America can do better, because America has no choice but to do better.

—Speech delivered on July 4, 1992, before the Annual Judicial Conference of the Second Circuit, quoted in Supreme Justice Speeches and Writings Thurgood Marshall. Edited by J. Clay Smith, Jr. (2002).

Thurgood Marshall (1908—1993) was a lawyer for the NAACP and later the first African-American United States Supreme Court Justice. He is most remembered for having filed and won Brown v. Board of Education.

Justice Marshall was a reliably liberal voice on the Supreme Court. During the administration of George H. W. Bush he took ill and resigned. Not wanting to seem racist, Bush appointed Clarence Thomas to the position, despite being the polar opposite of Marshall. While Marshall was surely waiting for a Democratic president before he resigned, congestive heart failure made it irresponsible to continue. Marshall passed away four days after Clinton's inauguration.

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