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| Thurgood Marshall |
Continuing to listen to Root and Branch, I continue to be amazed at the courage and intelligence of those who were fighting the legal battle to end segregation and improve the conditions under which many black people suffered because of the extreme bias of U.S. laws and the white supremacist culture that was dominant during most of the 20th century.
It had never occurred to me that the civil rights battle being waged in the courts was every bit as important as that being waged in the streets, and that in fact it was the only way to truly make headway in a society that was not changing its view of the Negro race (as they once termed it) any time soon. Non violent protest was very important, but it went hand in hand with legal battles that inch by inch made it illegal to treat our citizens in that shockingly brutal way that had been legal for so many centuries. Such treatment amounted to terrorism before that word and what it describes became so well known.
But I should have known, since I am a supporter of the Southern Poverty Law Center, whose central work involves using the law to fight civil rights battles even today--perhaps especially today. I'm thinking now that this institution continued the work started by Houston and Marshall and others like him. Unfortunately it continues to be necessary, given that the descendants and followers of the people who fought against blacks' becoming full citizens maintain their desire to put things back the way they were, when people could be tortured, beaten, jailed and even killed with impunity, with the full cooperation--and often instigation--of the law.
We're into the 1940s now in the narrative, just before things really got heated up down South. Marshall and the others have begun working on Southern criminal cases of injustice that boggle the mind they are so brutal and blatant. And the backlash is becoming quite severe, the work quite dangerous. I'm anxious to see how things will turn out, but part of me wants to turn away from the reality of those days--the horrific images tend to stick with me, a testament to the writer's skill.
I'll be back here to finish the story soon.
