Thurgood Marshall

United States. Oyez, oyez, oyez! All persons having business before the honorable the Supreme Court of the United States are advised to draw near and give their attention, for the Court is now sitting, and God save the United States and this honorable Court.” Everyone present stood and faced the long, highly polished bench at the front of the courtroom. Then the red velvet curtains behind the bench parted; nine black-robedmen stepped forward and seated themselves in high-backed leather chairs. Marshall eyed his opponent, John W. Davis. Tall, pale, and aristocratic in bearing, the 80-year-old Davis was known as the nation’s leading constitutional lawyer. As a law student, Thurgood Marshall had sometimes skipped classes to hear Davis argue before the Supreme Court. By 1953, Davis had argued 140 cases before the high court. Marshall himself had participated in 15 Supreme Court cases, but Brown had brought him face-to-face with the formidable Davis for the first time. Like Marshall, Davis argued Brown for moral rather than financial reasons. (His only payment for defending the South’s segregated school systems, in fact, was a silver tea service, presented by the South Carolina legislature.) Davis believed segregation was not only fair, but also necessary. Marshall, of course, believed exactly the opposite, but he nevertheless respected the older attorney: John W. Davis was a force to be reckoned with, and Marshall knew it. Presenting his final points on the Brown case the day before, Davis had argued brilliantly. Although he referred to his notes more frequently than in the past, the elderly attorney had lost none of his eloquence . With his mane of snow-white hair and his formal, old-fashioned suit, he cut an impressive figure in the courtroom. Davis regarded the separate-but-equal doctrine as a basic principle of American life. A time comes, he said, when such a principle “has been so often announced, so confidently relied upon, so long continued, that it passes the limits of judicial discretion and disturbance.” Davis had no doubt that equality had been achieved in the segregated school system. “I am reminded,” he said, “and I hope it won’t be treated as a reflection on anybody—of Aesop’s fable of the dog and the meat: The

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