73 A Fighter for Justice

He was denied admission to one law school because he was black. But today that same school has a law library named after him. You may not know much about Thurgood Marshall, but he strengthened education rights for African Americans all over the country.

Marshall was born in Baltimore in 1908. Like other African American students of his time, he went to segregated schools. These schools were not illegal. An 1896 law stated that schools for blacks and whites could be “separate but equal.” But Marshall knew that most black schools were not equal. He decided to do something about it.

Marshall received a law degree from Howard University. Then he began to work at changing the country’s schools. Marshall’s strategy was to start with colleges and graduate schools, because he thought judges would sympathize with ambitious young African Americans searching for an education. In 1935, he successfully sued the University of Maryland Law School to accept its first black student. Other cases followed, with similar results.

By the 1950s, Marshall was ready to turn to grade schools and high schools. In 1954, he accepted the case of Linda Brown, who wanted to attend a white grade school near her home. As a result of Marshall’s arguments, the Supreme Court changed the law. It said that “separate” schools could never be “equal.”

In 1967, Marshall became the first African American appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Until he retired in 1991, he supported many other civil rights bills.

73 正义的斗士

他曾因是黑人而被一所法学院拒绝录取，但如今这所学校有一个以他命名的法律图书馆。你可能不太了解瑟古德·马歇尔，但他强化了全美国非裔美国人的受教育权。

马歇尔于1908年出生在巴尔的摩。和他那个时代的其他非裔美国学生一样，他上的是种族隔离学校。这些学校并不违法：1896年的一项法律规定，黑人和白人的学校可以“隔离但平等”。但马歇尔知道大多数黑人学校并不平等，他决定为此做些什么。

马歇尔从霍华德大学获得了法律学位，随后开始致力于改变美国的学校体系。他的策略是从大学和研究生院入手，因为他认为法官会同情那些渴望接受教育的有抱负的年轻非裔美国人。1935年，他成功起诉马里兰大学法学院，让该校录取了第一名黑人学生。之后又有其他类似案件，都取得了相似的结果。

到20世纪50年代，马歇尔准备将目标转向小学和中学。1954年，他接手了琳达·布朗的案件，这个女孩希望就读她家附近的一所白人小学。由于马歇尔的辩护，最高法院修改了法律，称“隔离”的学校永远不可能“平等”。

1967年，马歇尔成为首位被任命为美国最高法院大法官的非裔美国人。直到1991年退休，他支持了许多其他民权法案。