FBI File on Thurgood Marshall
The first African-American Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall was an architect of the Civil Rights movement. He served as the chief counsel for the NAACP from 1938 to 1961. He argued more than thirty cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, culminating with the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision that made segregation in public schools illegal. In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him to the Supreme Court.
This file contains information on Marshall's civil rights activities in Texas during the 1950s and his allegations of harassment by Texas rangers and the Texas attorney general. Material reproduced here includes hate mail received by Marshall, background checks on Marshall and his supposed communist sympathies, and details on the FBI's surveillance of Marshall. The file also details Marshall's acrimonious relationship with the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover.
This lightly excised FBI file will be of great value to those studying African-American history and the civil rights movement.