Teachers' Domain; Civil Rights; Simple Justice: A Handful of Lawyers

All right now Mr. Marshall you are from Baltimore aren't you. Yes. Oh my goodness. Why are you OK Mr. Marshall to attend our little Howard Law School and not going to wish in free to the prestigious University of Maryland. I happen to be a Negro. I say. And negroes not attend the University of Maryland is that correct. No sir. I mean yes a negro is going to Maryland. Why is that. Who knows what that signifies. A lawsuit down south somewhere in Louisiana wants out. That's right 1896. What was it about Jim Crow.

That's a label not an explanation. Segregation so Plessy. Mr. Hill is why you arrive here from Richmond Virginia in a racially segregated train. Plessy Mr. Durham is why no one in this room can eat in most of the restaurants here in the capital of the world's greatest democracy. And Plessy Mr. Maher show is the reason it is against the law in 17 states for black children to go to school with white children. There are two kinds of lawyers gentleman. There are my kind and there are parasites on society. My kind of lawyer is going to be a social engineer. My kind of lawyer is going to be a fighter for social change. My kind of lawyer is going to find out everything there is to know about Plessy because Plessy is a dragon

gentleman and my kind of lawyer is going to go out and slay it. Thats why youre here Mr Marshall. Or it better be. And if its not you better pack up and leave right now because you will not make it from the start. Dean used to head us up and ogling the ins and outs of segregation cases spatially Plessy. Now the accommodations in the Negro call are the same as those in the Whites Only cause they are separate but equal no objective observer would call those accommodations equal Yana. That's not the point. My client Mr. Homer Plessy preferred to sit in a car designated whites only and was arrested in violation of his constitutional rights. His client Homer Plessy purposely broke the laws of the state of Louisiana but that law requires whites to sit in one car negro sit in another. That's discriminatory. It violates the 14th Amendment to the Constitution as they will refresh my memory Tell me exactly what the 14th Amendment says. Exactly. Most of your

entire case rests upon I don't think that's unreasonable. No State shall make or enforce any law which abridges the privileges of citizens of the United States. Nor shall any state denied to any person the equal protection of the law. OK counsel. What is the 14th Amendment have to say about the segregation law that Mr Plus he broke the 14th Amendment says to the state of Louisiana can't legislate away the rights and privileges given him by the federal government and just what the right so we're talking about the right to be treated the same as any other person not as a second class citizen a social. Parasite. I mean social inferior. Look under the 14th Amendment the law can't deprive us of freedoms other people having you know simply because we're negroes. Or can it. The Supreme Court ruled eight to one of they can keep you from going places white people can go. Racially separate facilities may be maintained by the states as long

as they are equal. Segregation is not discrimination. So. Everybody's equal. But. Negroes can be treated like outcast. That's that's just cream courts as a guarantee of equality has limits it does not require social equality but I don't see how that comes with the 14th amendment that was self-evident self-evident that that white people are more equal than Negro. Of course thought that was all in your mind Mr. Marshall. And I quote. The assumption that enforced separation stamps the colored race was a badge of inferiority they said is soley because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it. Wait for me Mr. Marshall. Lose your temper lose your case for 35 years the Supreme Court of the United States has resisted every attempt to overcome segregation. I say See. Question every attempt to overturn the

last vestiges of the slave codes I see question every attempt to open that door just a little bit so that we could become the people that we know we can become. By saying See. If you survive here gentlemen you will join a handful of Negro lawyers in this whole country who have been rigorously trained and with that distinction comes a truly enormous responsibility. We have to change the laws that keep people down. We must pave the way to the future. Without education there is no hope for our people. Hope our future is lost. So we must use the power and the logic of the law to stop the humiliation and the crippling of our children in disgraceful segregated schools. And we're going to have to accomplish this in the face of a Congress dominated by segregationist. We have to face the fact that no president since Abraham Lincoln has fought for Negro rights. And what that means is this. We're going to have to go to court. To the highest court in the

land to destroy Plessy. And we're going to have to be twice as good as the white lawyers that oppose us at every turn. We must not give in. We must not fail. Gentlemen congratulations to all of you. Mine I am so fivers. The men of the class of 1933.