![Thurgood Marshall (1908 – 1993) was a civil rights attorney and Supreme Court Justice. As the lead lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, he was dedicated to bringing about the end of racial segregation in American public schools. He won 29 of the 32 civil rights cases he argued before the Supreme Court, most notably the landmark 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education which ruled that segregation in public education was unconstitutional, thereby reversing the 1896 Supreme Court ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson that established the Separate But Equal doctrine. He was also the first Black justice to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Marshall was born in Baltimore Maryland, lived briefly in New York—where his parent sought better work opportunities, and moved back to Baltimore when he was six years old. His father enjoyed following legal cases and often took Thurgood with him to observe court proceedings. Along the way, Thurgood fell in love with the law saying of those times with his father,” [he] never told me to become a lawyer, but he turned me into one ... He taught me how to argue and challenged my logic on every point, by making me prove every statement I made, even if we were discussing the weather.”
In 1930, Thurgood Marshall graduated with honors from Lincoln University in Chester County, Pennsylvania, the oldest college for Black Americans in the United States. He attended Howard University School of Law in Washington, D.C. where he was mentored by Charles Hamilton Houston who championed the idea that his students could be “social engineers” by using the law as a means to fight for civil rights.
President John F. Kennedy appointed Thurgood Marshall to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 1961. President Lyndon B. Johnson nominated Marshall as Solicitor General, to which Marshall was confirmed in 1965. In 1967 President Johnson nominated Marshall to become a U.S. Supreme Court Justice. He was sworn in on October 7, 1967.
During his time on the high court, Justice Marshall ruled for equal protection and civil rights, often being the dissenting voice on cases regarding racial discrimination. He was strong on First Amendment rights, opposed capital punishment, and believed the Constitution guaranteed the right to privacy to all citizens. Thurgood Marshall was a pivotal character in American history, challenging America to be a better place for all.](https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-tiahp85/images/stencil/1280x1280/products/1484/2253/Thurgood-Marshall-flattened__88423.1700844205.png?c=2 "Thurgood Marshall (1908 – 1993) was a civil rights attorney and Supreme Court Justice. As the lead lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, he was dedicated to bringing about the end of racial segregation in American public schools. He won 29 of the 32 civil rights cases he argued before the Supreme Court, most notably the landmark 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education which ruled that segregation in public education was unconstitutional, thereby reversing the 1896 Supreme Court ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson that established the Separate But Equal doctrine. He was also the first Black justice to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Marshall was born in Baltimore Maryland, lived briefly in New York—where his parent sought better work opportunities, and moved back to Baltimore when he was six years old. His father enjoyed following legal cases and often took Thurgood with him to observe court proceedings. Along the way, Thurgood fell in love with the law saying of those times with his father,” [he] never told me to become a lawyer, but he turned me into one ... He taught me how to argue and challenged my logic on every point, by making me prove every statement I made, even if we were discussing the weather.”
In 1930, Thurgood Marshall graduated with honors from Lincoln University in Chester County, Pennsylvania, the oldest college for Black Americans in the United States. He attended Howard University School of Law in Washington, D.C. where he was mentored by Charles Hamilton Houston who championed the idea that his students could be “social engineers” by using the law as a means to fight for civil rights.
President John F. Kennedy appointed Thurgood Marshall to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 1961. President Lyndon B. Johnson nominated Marshall as Solicitor General, to which Marshall was confirmed in 1965. In 1967 President Johnson nominated Marshall to become a U.S. Supreme Court Justice. He was sworn in on October 7, 1967.
During his time on the high court, Justice Marshall ruled for equal protection and civil rights, often being the dissenting voice on cases regarding racial discrimination. He was strong on First Amendment rights, opposed capital punishment, and believed the Constitution guaranteed the right to privacy to all citizens. Thurgood Marshall was a pivotal character in American history, challenging America to be a better place for all.")
![F rederick Douglass (1818-1895) was born into slavery in Maryland, escaped to freedom in 1838, and thereafter worked his way to become the 19th century’s best-known and most prominent Black leader for the abolition of slavery, social reforms, and racial equality. He was a brilliant orator, writer, and statesman.
Douglass’s beginnings as a formidable New England abolitionist started in 1841 when he joined the Massachusetts Antislavery Society. In 1845, Douglass published his autobiography The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave. This led to his fear of re-enslavement, so he departed America to live in Great Britain for two years. During that time, he gave speeches in support of the American anti-slavery movement, raised enough money to buy his freedom (with the help of English Quakers), and returned to America to further his work.
Once settled in his adopted home of Rochester, New York, Douglass published The North Star, an abolitionist newspaper, from 1847 to 1860. In 1848, he attended the first convention for women’s rights, hosted by suffrage pioneer Elizabeth Cady Stanton in Seneca Falls, NY. He signed the convention’s “Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions,” which “demand[ed] the equal station [for women] to which they are entitled.” In further support of equal rights, Douglass joined the American Equal Rights Association (AERA). The organization’s purpose was “to secure Equal Rights to all American citizens, especially the right of suffrage, irrespective of race, color or sex.”
Frederick Douglass also published other periodicals. Douglass Monthly (1859–1863) expanded his abolitionist articles to include issues on social reform. There was also the Frederick Douglass Paper (1851–1860) and National Era (1870–1874).
Of his many eloquent speeches, Frederick Douglass’s July 4, 1852 speech—marking the United States’ 76th anniversary—is one of his most famous. He used the opportunity to protest the injustice of slavery saying, "Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future."](https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-tiahp85/images/stencil/1280x1280/products/1484/2254/Frederick-Douglass-flattened__03337.1700844205.png?c=2 "F rederick Douglass (1818-1895) was born into slavery in Maryland, escaped to freedom in 1838, and thereafter worked his way to become the 19th century’s best-known and most prominent Black leader for the abolition of slavery, social reforms, and racial equality. He was a brilliant orator, writer, and statesman.
Douglass’s beginnings as a formidable New England abolitionist started in 1841 when he joined the Massachusetts Antislavery Society. In 1845, Douglass published his autobiography The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave. This led to his fear of re-enslavement, so he departed America to live in Great Britain for two years. During that time, he gave speeches in support of the American anti-slavery movement, raised enough money to buy his freedom (with the help of English Quakers), and returned to America to further his work.
Once settled in his adopted home of Rochester, New York, Douglass published The North Star, an abolitionist newspaper, from 1847 to 1860. In 1848, he attended the first convention for women’s rights, hosted by suffrage pioneer Elizabeth Cady Stanton in Seneca Falls, NY. He signed the convention’s “Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions,” which “demand[ed] the equal station [for women] to which they are entitled.” In further support of equal rights, Douglass joined the American Equal Rights Association (AERA). The organization’s purpose was “to secure Equal Rights to all American citizens, especially the right of suffrage, irrespective of race, color or sex.”
Frederick Douglass also published other periodicals. Douglass Monthly (1859–1863) expanded his abolitionist articles to include issues on social reform. There was also the Frederick Douglass Paper (1851–1860) and National Era (1870–1874).
Of his many eloquent speeches, Frederick Douglass’s July 4, 1852 speech—marking the United States’ 76th anniversary—is one of his most famous. He used the opportunity to protest the injustice of slavery saying, \"Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.\"")
![Rosa Parks (1913-2005) was a civil rights activist known for her refusal to surrender her city bus seat to a white passenger on December 1, 1955. That bold act led to the 1955-1956 Montgomery bus boycott in Alabama and helped ignite the civil rights movement in the United States. “I was 42 [and] tired of giving in,” Parks said about her decision to defy the common practice of acquiescing Black American rights in deference to White American privilege. She was subsequently arrested and fined fourteen dollars, which she never paid.
Parks wasn’t the first to protest segregated public transit in Alabama—15-year-old Claudette Colvin was arrested nine months earlier for the same offense along with dozens of other Black women before her. Rosa Parks’ defiance, however, made the biggest impact because she was the secretary for the local NAACP and accepted the chapter president’s offer to appeal the conviction and thus challenge legal segregation in Alabama. Rosa Louise McCauley was born in Tuskegee, Alabama, but moved to her maternal grandparents’ farm in Pine Level, Alabama, outside Montgomery, with her mother and brother when she was two years old, following her parent’s divorce. For much of her childhood, Rosa was educated at home by her mother—a local schoolteacher—because Rosa suffered from chronic tonsillitis. She worked on the farm and learned to cook and sew. Racism was a constant presence for Rosa and her family. Public transportation, drinking fountains, restaurants, and schools were all segregated under Jim Crow laws. Night raids by the Ku Klux Klan forced her family to be ever vigilant and ready to leave their home at a moment’s notice on nights deemed particularly dangerous.
Rosa attended school from age eleven to sixteen. She left due to a family illness and started cleaning houses for white people. At age nineteen, she married Raymond Parks—a barber and civil rights activist. With his encouragement, Rosa earned her high school diploma and made a living as a seamstress. She joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1943 and served as its secretary until 1956.
Rosa Parks’ actions inspired the young pastor Martin Luther King, Jr. to lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott starting on December 5, 1955. It lasted 381 days. With Black American ridership constituting 70% of the bus system’s revenues, the boycott made a large statement as it deeply cut into the bus company’s revenues. Other boycotts subsequently took place across the country, protesting segregated restaurants and other public facilities. In November 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s decision declaring Montgomery’s segregated bus seating unconstitutional. Rosa Parks penned several books about her life, and became known as the “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement.”](https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-tiahp85/images/stencil/1280x1280/products/1484/2257/Rosa-Parks-flattened__93111.1700844205.png?c=2 "Rosa Parks (1913-2005) was a civil rights activist known for her refusal to surrender her city bus seat to a white passenger on December 1, 1955. That bold act led to the 1955-1956 Montgomery bus boycott in Alabama and helped ignite the civil rights movement in the United States. “I was 42 [and] tired of giving in,” Parks said about her decision to defy the common practice of acquiescing Black American rights in deference to White American privilege. She was subsequently arrested and fined fourteen dollars, which she never paid.
Parks wasn’t the first to protest segregated public transit in Alabama—15-year-old Claudette Colvin was arrested nine months earlier for the same offense along with dozens of other Black women before her. Rosa Parks’ defiance, however, made the biggest impact because she was the secretary for the local NAACP and accepted the chapter president’s offer to appeal the conviction and thus challenge legal segregation in Alabama. Rosa Louise McCauley was born in Tuskegee, Alabama, but moved to her maternal grandparents’ farm in Pine Level, Alabama, outside Montgomery, with her mother and brother when she was two years old, following her parent’s divorce. For much of her childhood, Rosa was educated at home by her mother—a local schoolteacher—because Rosa suffered from chronic tonsillitis. She worked on the farm and learned to cook and sew. Racism was a constant presence for Rosa and her family. Public transportation, drinking fountains, restaurants, and schools were all segregated under Jim Crow laws. Night raids by the Ku Klux Klan forced her family to be ever vigilant and ready to leave their home at a moment’s notice on nights deemed particularly dangerous.
Rosa attended school from age eleven to sixteen. She left due to a family illness and started cleaning houses for white people. At age nineteen, she married Raymond Parks—a barber and civil rights activist. With his encouragement, Rosa earned her high school diploma and made a living as a seamstress. She joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1943 and served as its secretary until 1956.
Rosa Parks’ actions inspired the young pastor Martin Luther King, Jr. to lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott starting on December 5, 1955. It lasted 381 days. With Black American ridership constituting 70% of the bus system’s revenues, the boycott made a large statement as it deeply cut into the bus company’s revenues. Other boycotts subsequently took place across the country, protesting segregated restaurants and other public facilities. In November 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s decision declaring Montgomery’s segregated bus seating unconstitutional. Rosa Parks penned several books about her life, and became known as the “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement.”")
Bayard Rustin notecard
$5.00
![Bayard Rustin (1912 – 1987) “shaped virtually every aspect of the modern civil rights movement as a theorist, strategist, and spokesman,” said his biographer Jerald Podair. He was “America’s signature radical voice during the 20th century [including] that of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., whom Rustin trained and mentored. ... he was a civil rights activist, a labor unionist, a socialist, a pacifist and, later in life, a gay rights advocate.”
Rustin was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania and raised by his maternal grandparents. He grew up in a large house believing that his mother was his older sister. His early influences included his grandmother’s religious association with Quakers and her membership in the NAACP—National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois and James Weldon Johnson were frequent guests in their home—all of which inspired a young Rustin to campaign against Jim Crow laws—discriminatory laws, rules, regulations, and customs meant to assert white supremacy.
His college education included Wilberforce College, Cheyney State Teachers College, and City College of New York. During these times, Rustin joined the American Friends Service Committee, worked to free the Scottsboro Boys—nine young black men in Alabama accused of raping two white women, and joined the Young Communist League—but quickly became disillusioned and resigned. As an accomplished tenor, he sang in a Broadway play and with Blues singer Josh White, performed in Greenwich Village nightclubs, and recorded spirituals from the 1950s through the 1970s.
Bayard Rustin’s evolving affiliations included the Socialist Party of Norman Thomas, work with pacifist A.J. Muste of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (who later named Rustin their college secretary for the FOR), and work to protect Japanese- Americans’ property during WWII. He also pioneered a movement to desegregate interstate bus travel. Rustin embraced the pacifist teachings of Mohandas Gandi and refused induction into the military by declaring his status as a conscientious objector, for which he was imprisoned from 1944 to 1946 for violating the Selective Service Act. In 1947, he was arrested for participation in a protest against segregated public transit; and in 1953, he was arrested on a morals charge for publicly engaging in homosexual activity.
His work as a civil rights organizer included the Freedom Rides, travel to India to learn more about non-violent resistance, secretary of the War Resisters League, and member of American Friends Service Committee. He is probably best remembered for his five-year special assistant and closer advisory position to Martin Luther King, Jr., which included Rustin’s 1956 advice to Dr. King on Gandhian tactics—convincing Dr. King to forego armed protection for the effective techniques of Gandhi’s non- violent approach. Rustin was also a key organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom where Dr. King delivered his “I Have A Dream Speech.”
His work as a civil rights organizer included the Freedom Rides, travel to India to learn more about non-violent resistance, secretary of the War Resisters League, and member of American Friends Service Committee. He is probably best remembered for his five-year special assistant and closer advisory position to Martin Luther King, Jr., which included Rustin’s 1956 advice to Dr. King on Gandhian tactics—convincing Dr. King to forego armed protection for the effective techniques of Gandhi’s non- violent approach. Rustin was also a key organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom where Dr. King delivered his “I Have A Dream Speech.”
Rustin’s work changed the course of history, for which he received numerous awards and honorary degrees during his career. He also authored four books: Time On Two Crosses, I Must Resist: Bayard Rustin’s Life, Down The Line, and Rustin: Strategies for Freedom: The Changing Patterns of Black Protest.](https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-tiahp85/images/stencil/1280x1280/products/1484/2252/Bayard-Rustin--flattened__22439.1700844205.jpg?c=2 "Bayard Rustin (1912 – 1987) “shaped virtually every aspect of the modern civil rights movement as a theorist, strategist, and spokesman,” said his biographer Jerald Podair. He was “America’s signature radical voice during the 20th century [including] that of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., whom Rustin trained and mentored. ... he was a civil rights activist, a labor unionist, a socialist, a pacifist and, later in life, a gay rights advocate.”
Rustin was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania and raised by his maternal grandparents. He grew up in a large house believing that his mother was his older sister. His early influences included his grandmother’s religious association with Quakers and her membership in the NAACP—National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois and James Weldon Johnson were frequent guests in their home—all of which inspired a young Rustin to campaign against Jim Crow laws—discriminatory laws, rules, regulations, and customs meant to assert white supremacy.
His college education included Wilberforce College, Cheyney State Teachers College, and City College of New York. During these times, Rustin joined the American Friends Service Committee, worked to free the Scottsboro Boys—nine young black men in Alabama accused of raping two white women, and joined the Young Communist League—but quickly became disillusioned and resigned. As an accomplished tenor, he sang in a Broadway play and with Blues singer Josh White, performed in Greenwich Village nightclubs, and recorded spirituals from the 1950s through the 1970s.
Bayard Rustin’s evolving affiliations included the Socialist Party of Norman Thomas, work with pacifist A.J. Muste of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (who later named Rustin their college secretary for the FOR), and work to protect Japanese- Americans’ property during WWII. He also pioneered a movement to desegregate interstate bus travel. Rustin embraced the pacifist teachings of Mohandas Gandi and refused induction into the military by declaring his status as a conscientious objector, for which he was imprisoned from 1944 to 1946 for violating the Selective Service Act. In 1947, he was arrested for participation in a protest against segregated public transit; and in 1953, he was arrested on a morals charge for publicly engaging in homosexual activity.
His work as a civil rights organizer included the Freedom Rides, travel to India to learn more about non-violent resistance, secretary of the War Resisters League, and member of American Friends Service Committee. He is probably best remembered for his five-year special assistant and closer advisory position to Martin Luther King, Jr., which included Rustin’s 1956 advice to Dr. King on Gandhian tactics—convincing Dr. King to forego armed protection for the effective techniques of Gandhi’s non- violent approach. Rustin was also a key organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom where Dr. King delivered his “I Have A Dream Speech.”
His work as a civil rights organizer included the Freedom Rides, travel to India to learn more about non-violent resistance, secretary of the War Resisters League, and member of American Friends Service Committee. He is probably best remembered for his five-year special assistant and closer advisory position to Martin Luther King, Jr., which included Rustin’s 1956 advice to Dr. King on Gandhian tactics—convincing Dr. King to forego armed protection for the effective techniques of Gandhi’s non- violent approach. Rustin was also a key organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom where Dr. King delivered his “I Have A Dream Speech.”
Rustin’s work changed the course of history, for which he received numerous awards and honorary degrees during his career. He also authored four books: Time On Two Crosses, I Must Resist: Bayard Rustin’s Life, Down The Line, and Rustin: Strategies for Freedom: The Changing Patterns of Black Protest.")
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