MARSHALL & THE AFL-CIO

AFL-CIO Report of Convention Proceedings (1956)

Mr. Meany, officers and friends: 

On behalf of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and those we represent, I want to say that it is more than a pleasure to be here this afternoon. 

I have condensed what I want to say on paper for a very simple reason: that is the only way I know to get something over in short fashion. I hope you will bear with me in reading, because I for one consider this one of the most important periods of our lives insofar as the actual practice of the survival of democracy is concerned.

We in the NAACP salute the merged AFL and CIO as an example of further consolidation of forces seeking justice for all Americans. The additional strength from this merger will most certainly be used for the benefit of the country in general. A large measure of the success in the fight for human dignity that has come about has resulted from the recognition by organized labor of the need of extending labor's fight from inside the plant to the community in general. So, those of us in the fight for justice for Negro Americans can now depend upon an even stronger support from this new consolidated arm of organized labor.

While great progress toward removing racial injustice from American life has been made in the past two decades, we have found that the real task is and will be the job of bringing established principles of law into every day practice in local communities. Experience during the past two years has made it clear to everyone concerned that real opposition to law and order is being built up in areas of the South. This opposition is being built up on the local level.

In backward areas of the South, the so-called 'good people' of these states have banded themselves in organizations such as the White Citizens Councils of Mississippi and other similar organizations. These local groups have grown during the past six months into state organizations and will, in short order cross state lines. While these organizations are set up for the ostensible purpose of 'using every lawful means' to preserve racial segregation and other forms of discrimination including the denial of the right to vote.

In truth and in fact these organizations are creating the type of atmosphere which now makes it possible to run Negroes out of business, to discharge Negroes from employment and even to threaten and murder poor defenseless Negroes in Mississippi. Of course, the White Citizens Councils deny any responsibility for these murders. However, they cannot deny that they created the atmosphere of disregard for the established law of the land. This atmosphere makes it possible for murderers to go free and unpunished. This atmosphere of lawlessness must be changed.

The murder of Rev. G.W. Lee in Belzoni, Miss., for insisting on his right to vote, the murder of Lamar Smith for insisting on the right to register and the unprovoked murder of little Emmett Till has focused national and world wide attention on Mississippi. These murders and other forms of intimidation point up but definitely the complete absence of protection for groups in the South. Of course, those of us who have been in this fight for any period of time have known of this lack of protection for Negroes along with similar lack of protection of the rights of organized labor in many areas of the South. It is a sad commentary to realize that many of us require cold-blooded murders in order to rally us to action.

The whole vicious program against Negroes in the South will without doubt lead to further violence and pressures against organized labor. One of the biggest jobs ahead for this consolidated bloc of labor leaders is to organize the unorganized in the South. Recent developments of lawlessness and opposition to voting and desegregation of education makes it clear that organized labor must insist that it be done throughout the South but must insist that it be done on a completely integrated basis without any compromise in the slightest detail to the segregated policies prevalent in areas of the South.

The Negro in the South has refused to compromise on the question of racial segregation in public education and other public facilities. Organized labor must refuse to compromise in its organizing even in the South. Between the two, we can rally other good forces of the South to the end that justice will prevail.

However, the inability of the United States Department of Justice to bring to justice those guilty of denying constitutional protected rights to Negroes in the South points up the need for adequate Federal legislation to protect all of us in the exercise of our rights throughout the South. In other words, we must have Federal protection of the right to live, to speak out, to organize and to insist upon our constitutionally protected rights. States such as Mississippi have demonstrated their unwillingness as well to protect these rights.

Therefore, we must use our combined strength to secure from Congress adequate anti-lynching legislation, anti-poll tax legislation and a strengthening of the federal Civil Rights Statutes as a bulwark against unprovoked violence in our every day work. We must, in addition, insist upon strong FEPC legislation and necessary safeguards in Federal appropriations in schools, housing and other facilities which will prevent Federal money from being used to continue segregation in opposition to the law of the land.

It should also be noted that this vicious anti-Negro program extends to white citizens who dare to speak out for justice for Negroes. It is highly significant that in many areas of the deep South organized labor is being bracketed in the same position as the Negro.

In this great expansion program of bringing great industries into the South, organized labor has a more important task than ever before in seeing to it that the plants involved are not only organized on a completely non-racial basis but that the communities surrounding these plants are run in a democratic fashion which today means, according to the law of the land, the absence of racial segregation. Anything short of this will merely mean that the expansion program in the South will become a further example of extended racial discrimination on an even larger scale. At this late date, it goes without saying that organized labor has a terrific stake in vigorously opposing racial segregation in community life whether it be in the North or South.

Despite all of the organized opposition to desegregation, it is important to remember that the solid South is broken for the first time on the question of race. As of today, twelve of the seventeen Southern states are now admitting Negroes to graduate and professional schools. Some thirty-odd private universities of the South have opened their doors to Negroes and it is just a short matter of time until all will be opened up.

It is also worthy of note that on the elementary and high school levels portions of either of the seventeen Southern states and the District of Columbia have moved toward integration of public schools and this has been accomplished in less then two years. This is the type of progress that has solidified the unreconstructed areas which are now more determined than ever to do everything possible to prevent integration of public schools.

In the latest drive toward desegregation as a result of recent Supreme Court decisions we have found that the good people of the South are either afraid or unwilling to oppose the pro-segregationist groups. We find that most of the Southern press is against integration of public schools. We find that church organizations for the most part will go no further than to merely adopt innocuous resolutions in favor of desegregation.

If the desegregation job is to be done, it will have to be done on the local level. If we are to be successful in this task we will need more than ever before the support of organizations such as those here represented who are in a position to transform resolutions into action programs on the local level.

The type of diehard opposition now being built up in the South will not disappear overnight and we cannot blow it away. It will only be removed by intelligent cooperative leadership of those Americans who have more at stake than others. Together we can do the job.

Thurgood Marshall, Special Counsel, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

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Mary L. Dudziak. Exporting American Dreams: Thurgood Marshall's African Journey (2008)

Reviews "Effectively sketches those events in the civil rights movement... Dudziak's clarity and careful documentation make her book accessible to the general reader and a valuable tool for African and African-American studies."—Publishers Weekly "Dudziak brings out with impressive clarity how Thurgood Marshall's greatness stemmed from his Whitman-esque ability to contain multitudes: committed to the rule of law, he could chide Kenya's new leadership for departing even slightly from it, work for justice in segregated America, and sustain a relationship with young civil rights activists taking direct and 'illegal' action in the early 1960s." —Mark Tushnet, Harvard Law School and author of Making Civil Rights Law: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court, 1956-1961

"This book on a less-studied part of Marshall's career is recommended for libraries collecting in law, legal processes, and African and African American history."—Library Journal

"In this gem of a book, Mary Dudziak brings vividly to life the important but little known history of Thurgood Marshall's intense involvement with Kenya during its journey toward independence in the 1960s. This great champion of the American civil rights struggle never relinquished his hope that democracy and equality would one day flourish in Kenya, even as he became painfully aware of the obstacles that stood in the path of this dream. A powerful and poignant story, beautifully told."—Gary Gerstle, Vanderbilt University and author of American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century

"By dint of creative and exhaustive research, Mary Dudziak has written an excellent book about a facet of Thurgood Marshall's career that has never before received substantial attention. Who knew that 'Mr. Civil Rights' contributed significantly to African as well as American legal systems. All students of this great man's life owe a major debt to Professor Dudziak's labors."—Randall Kennedy, Harvard Law School and author of Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal

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Marshall, LBJ and the Court LBJ Broke New Ground; Will the Next President Have a Similar Opportunity? When he tap Thurgood Marshall for the U.S. Supreme Court in the summer of 1967, Lyndon Baines Johnson made history: The great-grandson of an African American slave was nominated to join the nation’s highest court. “Lyndon Johnson was tremendously proud of the nomination,” says USC legal scholar Mary L. Dudziak. “Johnson was focused on what the achievement would say to all the African American children in the land, what they could aspire to in their own lives.” After the Marshall appointment, it would be another 14 years before another appointment of equal symbolism occurred: the nomination of Sandra Day O’Connor by Ronald Reagan.

In the past two decades, the nomination and confirmation process has been more about the politics of right vs. left than about reflecting the new diversity of America, says Dudziak, who sees the upcoming centennial of Marshall’s birth on July 2 as an opportunity to reflect on the politics and symbolism of Supreme Court nominees.

Dudziak’s new book, Exporting American Dreams: Thurgood Marshall's African Journey, traces Marshall’s progression from civil rights attorney to a legal figure of international prominence who, among other achievements, crafted a draft bill of rights for Kenya, which in the early 1960s was transitioning into statehood after years of British colonial rule.

Will the next president of the United States have a chance to make history with a Supreme Court nomination? Dudziak says an obvious opportunity — the appointment of an openly-gay jurist to the court — could become a political battleground, as Marshall’s nomination was. But with more support for full inclusion of gays and lesbians, this milestone will eventually be achieved, she says.

Dudziak believes there is an opportunity for the next president to speak directly to the American public through the nomination process. “Either candidate might break barriers and make history with a court appointment,” she concludes.

Source: Exporting American Dreams Blog

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update 24 July 2008