In 1915, when D.W. Griffiths's Civil War epic The Birth of a Nation debuted—depicting the Ku Klux Klan as a heroic force—Jim Crow segregation laws were firmly entrenched in the South and much of the North. Blacks had no political representation and could not vote in the South, where only a relatively small number of black lawyers served, mostly working on routine matters such as wills and estate inheritance. This was the world in which a young Baltimore-raised Thurgood Marshall grew up. Mr. Civil Rights, aired on PBS, illustrates how Marshall and a small number of NAACP activists took on the issue of segregation, case by case, culminating in the landmark Supreme Court case Brown vs. Board of Education, which struck down the doctrine of "separate but equal" laid down in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision. Unable to attend a Maryland university law school due to his race, Marshall enrolled at Howard University, where he was mentored by Charles Hamilton Houston, who believed that the court system was the only true avenue for change for blacks. Houston, Marshall, and others would try to stand the law on its head, demanding that truly equal schools and other public buildings be made available to all. In a motor tour of the Deep South, Marshall found that black schools were little more than tarpaper shacks—with no electricity or running water—where students used old textbooks and were taught by poorly paid and trained teachers. Such visits were often perilous: in one instance, when Marshall had to slip into town hidden in a hearse, he was pursued by police, and even threatened with lynching. The documentary chronicles the NAACP's strategy to make lawyers "social engineers" and agents for change, detailing how Marshall's legal work helped lay the foundations for the 1965 Voting Rights Act, among other measures, but the main goal was always equal education opportunities. Supreme Court justices John Paul Stevens and Elena Kagan, along with civil rights leaders including Vernon Jordan, here recall Marshall as a gifted raconteur, who blended humor with passion for the cause. Although the program reveals little of Marshall's private life and doesn't cover his later career as a Supreme Court justice, it does a solid job of detailing Marshall's role in key developments during the fight for civil rights. DVD extras include a conversation with Stevens and Kagan. Recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (S. Rees)
Mr. Civil Rights: Thurgood Marshall & The NAACP
(2014) 60 min. DVD: $24.99 ($54.99 w/PPR). PBS Video. SDH captioned. ISBN: 978-1-62789-086-1. Volume 30, Issue 1
Mr. Civil Rights: Thurgood Marshall & The NAACP
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