Tushnet, Mark V.

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Valparaiso University

Valparaiso University Law Review Volume 26 Number 1 Symposium: The Bill of Rights Yesterday and Today: A Bicentennial Celebration Symposium: The Bill of Rights Yesterday and Today: A Bicentennial Celebration In Honor of Justice Thurgood Marshall: Thurgood Marshall: The Inner-Directed Personality Mark V. Tushnet Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.valpo.edu/vulr  Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Mark V. Tushnet, In Honor of Justice Thurgood Marshall: Thurgood Marshall: The Inner-Directed Personality, 26 Val. U. L. Rev. (1991). Available at: https://scholar.valpo.edu/vulr/vol26/iss1/5 This Introduction is brought to you for free and open access by the Valparaiso University Law School at ValpoScholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Valparaiso University Law Review by an authorized administrator of ValpoScholar. For more information, please contact a ValpoScholar staff member at scholar@valpo.edu. THURGOOD MARSHALL: THE INNER-DIRECTED PERSONALITYMARK V. TUSHNET"In 1950, as Thurgood Marshall and his colleagues were preparing theirattack on segregation in elementary and secondary education, David Reismanand his colleagues published The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the ChangingAmerican Character.' Reisman described two typical character formationsprevalent in the post-war era. The "other directed" character, who Reismansaid was "concentrated" in the "middle classes of the American big cities," was"psychologically oriented to his contemporaries," needing "open approval andguidance" from them.2 Reisman's depiction of the rise of "other direction"resonated in the culture of the 1950s. Arthur Miller's character Willie Loman,in Death of a Salesman, captured the sense of men, gregarious, jocular, andapparently open in public, yet driven by their need for approval and hollow atthe core.Reisman also described the "inner directed" character. Such people wereguided by "an internal psychic 'gyroscope';" by "self-discipline and self-development," they "helped to 'produce' their own characters," and were often"rewarded by mastery over others."' The language with which Reismandescribed the "inner directed" character left little doubt that he thought suchpeople more attractive than "other directed" people. As Reisman's descriptionswere assimilated into the culture of the 1950s the self-confident "inner directed"character certainly seemed preferable.An outsider might have thought Thurgood Marshall a typical "otherdirected" character. A recent graduate who was interviewed by Marshall for ajob at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in the early 1950s later reported that hewas "shocked at the way Marshall talked." Marshall "began regaling the groupwith one knee-slapping, back-slapping story after another, always in the most* Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center; Law Clerk to Justice ThurgoodMarshall, October 1972 Term.1. DAVID REISMAN Er AL., REUEL DENNEY & NATHAN GLAZER, THE LONELY CROWD: ASTUDY OF THE CHANGING AMERICAN CHARACTER (1950). Reisman, trained as a lawyer and a lawclerk to Justice Brandeis, turned to social psychology in the 1940s.2. DAVID REISMAN, INDIVIDUAuSM RECONSIDERED 104-05 (1954).3. Id. at 101.Tushnet: In Honor of Justice Thurgood Marshall:  Thurgood Marshall:  The IProduced by The Berkeley Electronic Press, 1991VALPARAISO UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW [Vol. 26loathsome language."" As a lawyer for the NAACP Marshall spent much ofhis time travelling in the South, and his memoranda to his colleagues in the NewYork office reveal the way in which he worked hard and played hard. In early1943, for example, he described a day full of meetings with African-Americanteachers and their friends, who were attempting to force the state to pay African-American teachers at the same rate that white teachers were paid. The dayended, Marshall wrote, with a "very important meeting at one of the bars intown for the purpose of forgetting about the other meetings -- this meeting wasa great success." 5Even after he became a judge, Marshall seemed to some of his colleaguestoo "other directed." Henry Friendly, for example, was disturbed by Marshall'sjocularity, the way he seemed to deal with cases by telling a story aboutsomething that Marshall thought related, and his seeming efforts to demonstratethat he was on first-name terms with all the Justices of the Supreme Court.6Justice William 0. Douglas, writing a memorandum to his files shortly afterMarshall was appointed to the Supreme Court, called Marshall "a fineindividual, but extremely opinionated and not very well trained in the law. His[statement to the Conference] was rather on the side of wasting a lot of time andin a lot of idle talk and irrelevant conversation. " 'These evaluations of Marshall were, to be charitable, simply wrong.Marshall was indeed gregarious and fun-loving, and he certainly liked to tell a.good story. He told his stories, though, for a purpose, which not all hislisteners were astute enough to understand. For example, Marshall later told thelawyer who was so disturbed at his "foulness" that Marshall was testing him:Marshall knew that the lawyer was talented, but he needed to know "if youcould stand working with 'niggers.' ' For all the outward appearances,Marshall was the quintessential "inner directed" personality. His parents hadgiven him the ".inner gyroscope" of values that Marshall followed throughout hislife. Marshall's high spirits sometimes got him into trouble in school, which hisparents put up with. But, Marshall later said, the one thing his father told himabout getting into fights was, "Anyone calls you nigger, you not only got mypermission to fight him - you got my orders to fight him."" And fight them4. Thomas Chambers, Profile: Leonard Schroeter, B. BULL. (Seattle-King County Bar) Nov.,1989.5. Memorandum from Thurgood Marshall to office (Jan. 18, 1943) (NAACP Papers,Maunscript Division, Library of Congress).6. Letters from Henry Friendly to Felix Frankfurter (Jan. 9, 1962 and Feb. 2, 1962) (FelixFrankfurter Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress).7. Memorandum from William 0. Douglas to file (Box 1402 file of argued cases, no. 701)(William 0. Douglas Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress).8. Chambers, supra note 4.9. RicHARD KLuoss, SIMPLE JUSTICE 177 (1976).Valparaiso University Law Review, Vol. 26, No. 1 [1991], Art. 5https://scholar.valpo.edu/vulr/vol26/iss1/51991]Marshall did, throughout his life.In many ways, indeed, once Marshall became the most important lawyerin this century, his outward behavior - the appearance of "other direction" -was precisely the result of his inner direction. Segregation and discriminationwere wrong, Marshall believed, because they occurred when other people triedto stop him and other African-Americans from doing what they wanted to do.He simply would not fit into the molds that others tried to put around him. So,when he became a major figure in United States history, Marshall did not adoptthe sober demeanor expected of such an important personage. That is whatDouglas failed to understand. Similarly, Marshall delighted in discomfiting thepompous Chief Justice Warren Burger by greeting him with, "What's shakin',Chiefy baby?" One of Marshall's favorite stories about his presence in theSupreme Court told of some tourists who got on the Supreme Court elevator tofind Marshall there. Believing that an African-American in the Supreme Courtelevator had to be the operator, the tourists said, "First floor, please," to whichMarshall said he responded, "Yowsa, yowsa."'0There is, though, another side to these stories. Marshall was demonstratingthat he was his own person, no matter what others' assumptions might be abouthow a Supreme Court justice should behave, or what jobs an African-Americancould hold. But, they were of interest because they were stories about ThurgoodMarshall. Another of Marshall's stories has several variants. One version dealswith the Little Rock school desegregation case. According to Marshall, he andWiley Branton, who had been the principal lawyer in Little Rock, had justreturned to New York from the oral argument at the Supreme Court. Theycaught a taxicab at the airport. The African-American cab-driver, overhearingthem talk about their work, concluded that they were lawyers and said, "Isn'tit great what Dr. King did today?" Marshall asked what that was, and thedriver replied, "Oh, he got the Supreme Court to let those black kids stay inCentral High School." Marshall said to Branton, "Wiley, did you hear that?Did you hear what Dr. King did today?""Branton said that this story showed how Marshall responded to the "typicalmatter of other people getting credit for something Thurgood Marshall reallydid. " 12 Yet, there is more to it. The story has an audience precisely becauseMarshall did get credit for what he did in making civil rights law. And,Marshall's version has an important undertone: He is a successful lawyer forcivil rights, and yet his success was qualified. Marshall was never bothered by10. BOB WooDwARD & SCOTr ARMSTRONG, THE BRETHREN 59 (1979).1I. Thurgood Marshall the Man, (WUSA-television broadcast, Dec. 13, 1987) (transcript onfile with author).12. Id.Tushnet: In Honor of Justice Thurgood Marshall:  Thurgood Marshall:  The IProduced by The Berkeley Electronic Press, 1991VALPARAISO UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW [Vol. 26the fact that others got credit for his work, because he had a firm enough senseof who he was that he hardly needed the approval of others. Indeed, he wasoften suspicious that people were simply honoring themselves in the guise ofhonoring him. His fabled grumpiness on receiving invitations and honors wasrooted in that suspicion.But, Marshall could be suspicious of others only because of his firm senseof who he was. Unlike the "other directed" people who some believed Marshallto be, he was directed by a vision of justice, rooted in the Constitution, that hehad made his own. For Marshall, the government the framers devised may havebeen "defective from the start" because it tolerated African-American slaveryand "trade[d] moral principles for self-interest,"'" but, he also said, "You'llnever find a better Constitution than this one, I know." 413. Thurgood Marshall, Rejlectons on the Bicetennial of the United States Constitution, 101HARv. L. REv. 1 (1987).14. Searching for Justice: Three American Stories (WUSA television broadcast, Sept. 13,1987) (transcript on file with author).Valparaiso University Law Review, Vol. 26, No. 1 [1991], Art. 5https://scholar.valpo.edu/vulr/vol26/iss1/5

In Honor of Justice Thurgood Marshall:  Thurgood Marshall:  The Inner-Directed Personality

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In Honor of Justice Thurgood Marshall: Thurgood Marshall: The Inner-Directed Personality

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