Why Court’s Civil Rights Hero Might Have Opposed Affirmative Action

Dec 11 2022 by POLITICO - TOP Stories

 

During a period of intense debate over affirmative action in 1987, Thurgood Marshall, the nation’s first Black Supreme Court justice, was called upon to defend one of his judicial heroes, John Marshall Harlan.

It was Harlan whose lone dissent in the 1896 case of Plessy v. Ferguson had inspired the young Marshall to challenge the Supreme Court’s invidious separate-but-equal doctrine. And when Marshall, as head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, brought Brown v. Board of Education...

Continue Reading Why Court’s Civil Rights Hero Might Have Opposed Affirmative Action