This documentary was produced by PBS. Throughout the film, one hears beautiful music, including gospel. Several prominent intellectuals speak in the film about what Thurgood Marshall represented for the American nation, such as legal scholars Vernon Jordan and Kimberly Crewnshaw (who created and developed the famous socio-political concept of intersectionality). Thurgood Marshall studied at Lincoln University, the first African American university founded in 1854. He then continued his education at Howard University Law School. Charles H. Houston was his mentor. Houston studied law at Harvard. He influenced Marshall to become a social engineer.

 

During Marshall's youth, there were only 100 Black lawyers in the South. The documentary addresses this context. Thus, in this part of the nation, Black people could not vote (arbitrary mechanisms were also created, such as tests to verify knowledge of the U.S. Constitution) because of the Jim Crow system established in 1877, twelve years after the end of the Civil War. The country created a two-tiered education system, as seen in the film, which shows the conditions under which African American children had to study in schools during the era of segregation. The documentary shows the various strategies adopted by Mr. Marshall and his legal team to dismantle the Jim Crow system through the NAACP, the oldest and largest civil rights organization in the country.

 

Mr. Marshall was a handsome, intelligent, and courageous man. He was also considered elegant and was said to have a good sense of humor. His work was stressful because his activism could put his life in danger. He is considered a star lawyer and he is recognized for having won some of the most important cases in the United States. The attitude of Black Americans changed after World War II because African American soldiers could not accept having fought for their nation only to return home and still be treated as second-class citizens. It is therefore no coincidence that the Civil Rights Movement began in the early 1950s. During this period, Mr. Marshall won the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 concerning school desegregation in American schools. Segregation (which prevented African Americans from fully participating in social, economic, and political life, among other things) in America ended with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (guaranteeing the enforcement of the 15th Amendment to the Constitution), enacted by President Johnson.

 

At the end of the documentary, there is a key list of his cases, along with brief summaries from 1944 to 1961, such as Shelley v. Kramer, Morgan v. Virginia, and Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (cited above), etc. In this regard, as a lawyer, he addressed issues such as housing, politics, education, the military, transportation, and the wage gap between Black and White teachers. His legal contributions were remarkable.  In this way, on October 2, 1967 (the same birthdate as another great pacifist, Gandhi, born in 1869, almost a century earlier), he became the first African American to serve as a Supreme Court Justice in the United States. Some consider Mr. Marshall the greatest lawyer of the 20th century.  This documentary should be translated into several languages, including French. The film adequately summarizes Mr. Marshall's professional career.