Marshall

Directed by Reginald Hudlin

Starring Chadwick Boseman

A review and historical background to the film

On our forty-second anniversary Judi and I viewed the film Marshall. This is a true story about how Thurgood Marshall and his assistant attorney, Samuel Friedman, attempted to overcome a thoroughly racist judicial system, and convince an all caucasian jury that a Black man was innocent of the crime of rape. At that time Thurgood Marshall was working for the NAACP.

This trial took place in the predominantly working class city of Bridgeport, Connecticut in the year 1940. The caucasian woman who alleged this crime, Eleanor Strubing, was the employer of the accused, Joseph Spell, and lived in the affluent town of Greenwich, Connecticut.

We might consider that the rise of the labor movement before, during, and after the Second World War began to change racist attitudes of workers in this country. By 1947 Jackie Robinson became the first Black baseball player to play for a major league team. By 1955 Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to sit in the back of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. This action sparked the 385 day Montgomery Bus Boycott.

The idea of Black men being accused of raping caucasian women has a long history in this country. Thousands of Black people were lynched in this country and the primary reason for most of these lynchings was the accusation of rape. Racist mobs carried out these lynchings and the government rarely if ever prosecuted the murderers.

Ida Wells

The lynch mobs in the south had their allies in members of the established society who argued that their actions were in part justified.  Philip A. Bruce was a so-called historian, the son of a plantation owner who had 500 slaves, the nephew of the Confederacy’s former secretary of war, and a Harvard graduate.  Bruce wrote a book called The Plantation Negro as a Freeman.  In this book Bruce demonstrated that he was in effect a 19th century mythologist who fantasized that black men, “found something strangely alluring and seductive in the appearance of White women.”  Bruce also argued that free blacks had become criminals since they were no longer shacked by the bonds of slavery.  This sort of mythology convinced many people that although lynchings were wrong, they might have been provoked by crimes committed by blacks. 

Ida Wells answered this argument in a pamphlet where she studied 728 lynchings that had taken place during decade prior to 1892.  Paula Giddings summarized Wells’ findings in her book, When and Where I Enter.

“The result was a fastidiously documented report.  Only a third of the murdered Blacks were even accused of rape, much less guilty of it, Wells discovered.  Most were killed for crimes like ‘incendiarism,’ ‘race prejudice,’ ‘quarreling with Whites,’ and ‘making threats.’  Furthermore, not only men but women and even children were lynched.  ‘So great is Southern hate and prejudice,’ Wells wrote, ‘they legally (?) hung poor little thirteen-year-old Mildrey Brown at Columbia, S.C., Oct., 7th on circumstantial evidence that she poisoned a white infant.  If her guilt had been proven unmistakable, had she been White,’ Wells concluded, ‘Mildrey Brown would never have been hung.  The country would have been aroused and South Carolina disgraced forever.  .  .’ ”

Frederick Douglass admitted to being influenced by arguments made by people like Philip Bruce and stated he “had begun to believe it true that there was increased lasciviousness on the part of Negroes.”  Upon reading Ida Wells pamphlet Southern Horrors, he sent her a letter stating, “Brave Woman!  You have done your people and mine a service which can neither be weighed nor measured.  If the American consciousness were only half alive.  .  .  a scream of horror, shame and indignation would rise to Heaven.  .  .”[2]

In 1894, two years after writing the above letter to Ida Wells, Douglass gave one of his most important speeches aptly titled, “The Lessons of the Hour.”  In this speech Douglass rebuked those who claimed to be friends of the black community, but argued that, “the colored race” provoked lynchings in the south.  Douglass quoted Frances Willard of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union who fantasized about problems that she felt white men and women in the southern states suffered from, “ ‘The colored race multiplies like the locusts of Egypt.  The safety of women, of childhood, of the home, is menaced in a thousand localities at this moment, so that men dare not go beyond the sight of their own roof tree.’”

Douglass made it clear that Willard’s charge was not directed only against individuals who may or may not have committed crimes, but against all African Americans.   He also pointed out that the victims of lynchings were denied their constitutional right to be tried in a court of law, and were instead judged by mob rule.  The mob, “Blinded by its own fury, it is moved by impulses utterly unfavorable to a clear perception of the facts and the ability to make an impartial statement of the simple truth.”

Douglass continued by pointing out that the charge of rape was never made against blacks during slavery.  “I reject the charge brought against the Negro as a class, because all through the late war, while the save-masters of the South were absent from their home, in the field of rebellion, with bullets in their pockets, treason in their hearts, broad blades in their bloody hands, seeking the life the nation, with the vile purpose of perpetuating the enslavement of the Negro, their wives, their daughters, their sisters and their mothers were left in the absolute custody of these same Negroes and during all those long four years of terrible crime now alleged against him, there was never a single instance of such crime reported or charged against him.”

Although African Americans had not been accused of raping white women in the past, this was not the first time violence was carried out against them.  Douglass cited the following reasons given to justify this violence.   “First, you remember, as I have said, it was insurrection, (against slavery).  When that wore out, Negro supremacy became the excuse, (in reconstruction).  When that was worn out, then came the charge of assault upon defenseless women.”

The actual reason for the lynchings was that, “The landowners of the South want the labor of the Negro on the hardest terms possible.  They once had it for nothing. They now want it for next to nothing.”

Douglass went on to describe how the brutality against black women in slavery was not imagined but real.  “Slavery itself, you will remember, was a system of unmitigated, legalized outrage upon black women of the South, and no white man was ever shot, burned or hanged for availing himself of all the power that slavery gave him at this point.”

These are some of the solutions Douglass offered to solve what he considered a “national problem.”  “Let the South abandon the system of mortgage labor and cease to make the Negro a pauper, by paying him dishonest scrip for his honest labor.

“Let them give up the idea that they can be free while making the Negro a slave.  Let them give up the idea that to degrade the colored man is to elevate the white man.  Let them cease putting new wine into old bottles, and mending old garments with new cloth.”

Finally he said, “Banish the idea that one class must rule over another.  Recognize the fact that the rights of the humblest citizens are as worthy of protection as are those of the highest and your problem will be solved.”[3]

When we consider this history, I believe that the trial portrayed in the film Marshall takes on new meaning. Had this been a trial interested in justice, Ida Well’s study of 728 lynchings would have been allowed into evidence. This information would have shown government complicity in murdering thousands of Black men and women in order to terrorize the Black community. If this would ever happen, we can question whether juries would ever take the words of prosecuting attorneys seriously.

To the contrary, the day after Eleanor Strubing made her accusation of rape against Joseph Spell, these accusations were reported in the New York Times. While the Times argues that it reports, “all the news that’s fit to print,” their coverage of this story followed a pattern long established by the Ku Klux Klan.

McCleskey v. Kemp

In the film Marshall we get the impression that things have changed with respect to the so-called justice system in this country. Perhaps the language of judges and prosecutors may have changed, but the 1987 Supreme Court case of McCleskey V. Kemp illustrates how institutionalized discrimination continues to be a part of this so-called justice system. Michelle Alexander reported on this case in her book, The New Jim Crow – Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness.

Warren McCleskey was a Black man facing the death sentence for murdering a police officer during an armed robbery in Georgia. The NAACP legal defense fund supported McCleskey’s claim that Georgia’s death penalty was infected with racial bias and violated the Fourteenth and Eight Amendments to the Constitution.

McCleskey’s claim was supported by a study conducted by Professor David Baldus. Baldus found that Georgia prosecutors sought the death penalty in 70 percent of the cases involving Black defendants and caucasian victims, but only 19 percent of cases involving caucasian defendants and Black victims.

The Supreme Court ruled against McCleskey. The court argued that statistical evidence was not proof of discrimination. Unless a defendant like McCleskey could prove that the prosecutor intentionally sought the death penalty because McCleskey was Black, the statistical evidence of discrimination was irrelevant.

The Supreme Court fully understood that prosecutors are shielded by laws that prevent attorneys from questioning their motives. Therefore the case of McCleskey v. Kemp made it clear that discriminatory practices by prosecuting attorneys were legal, except when prosecutors admitted they had racist intentions.

In my opinion, this is almost like saying that if someone who is accused of murder refused to acknowledge that he or she was guilty, this evidence would automatically exonerate the accused and supersede all evidence to the contrary.

Tanya McDowell

Thurgood Marshall argued several cases to the Supreme Court. One of his most famous cases was Brown v. the Board of Education Topeka in 1954. This case argued that state laws that established separate schools for Black and caucasian students were unconstitutional. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of this argument.

The case of Tanya McDowell illustrates how prosecuting attorneys have twisted this decision in order to make Brown v. the Board of Education Topeka largely meaningless. This case happens to take place in the same area as the trial portrayed in the film Marshall.             

Tanya McDowell was a homeless mother who sent her son to a public Norwalk, Connecticut school while residing in Bridgeport.  The authorities in Norwalk felt that this was a crime.  As a result, a Norwalk court sentenced McDowell to twelve years in prison and she has been fined $6,200. Her sentence was reduced to five years in prison.  McDowell happens to be Black.   

The idea of sending a mother to prison for sending her son to a public school appears to be incomprehensible.  However, the court decision sending McDowell to prison took place in a nation that claims to represent “liberty and justice for all.”  In order to understand the background to this case, we need to look at a bit of history.        

The heroic struggle to free the people of the United States from Jim Crow segregation is known throughout the world.  The Civil Rights movement effectively forced the Supreme Court to make its decision of Brown vs. the Board of Education Topeka.  This decision ruled that the idea of separate but equal, or segregated education is illegal.  However, this decision only applied to students living in a particular school district.  Today, education continues to be segregated when we compare many inner cities to the suburban communities.  This is the problem that Tanya McDowell faces today.

The Census Bureau lists the Norwalk, Stamford, Bridgeport, Connecticut metropolitan area as the 13^th most segregated metropolitan area in the nation.  Typically this means that educational facilities are funded at a much higher rate in the suburban areas than in the inner cities. 

Philadelphia is rated as the ninth most segregated metropolitan area in the nation.  Per student funding for education in Philadelphia is about $11,000 per year and about 90% of the school population is Black or Latino.  When we cross the Philadelphia border at City Line Avenue, we enter the Lower Merion School District where per student funding for education is about $22,000 and about eighty to ninety percent of the student population is caucasian. 

In my opinion, Tanya McDowell has a more consistent view of the educational system in this country than the Supreme Court.  McDowell understands that segregated educational facilities are not equal.  While the judicial system allows gross disparities in the funding of education, McDowell took a different approach.  She used the address of her babysitter, Ana Rebecca Marques, to register her son in a Norwalk school while she resided in Bridgeport. 

The authorities in Norwalk charged Tanya McDowell with stealing $15,000 in educational services from the district.  The housing authority in Norwalk evicted Ana Rebecca Marques from her so-called public housing for providing the documents that allowed McDowell’s son to go to school in the district.  Twenty-six other students have been thrown out of Norwalk’s so-called public schools for similar reasons. McDowell was singled out for prosecution because she sold illegal drugs to an undercover agent.

When we consider the charge that Tanya McDowell stole money from the Norwalk School District, we might consider a few facts.  The historical facts are that huge amounts of money were effectively stolen from Black people during slavery, Jim Crow segregation, as well as the legalized discrimination we see today.  This theft was, and continues to be perfectly legal. To the best of my knowledge, no one ever went to prison for steeling this money.  To the contrary, some of the most lucrative financial enterprises have reaped enormous profits from this discrimination.

The Mayor of Norwalk, Connecticut is Richard A. Moccia.  His daughter, Suzanne Vieux, is the District Attorney who prosecuted Tanya McDowell.  These politicians have a similar outlook as the top government officials, which include former President Barack Obama.  These officials understand that there is blatant discrimination in the educational system in this country, and they have decided to do nothing about it.  To the contrary, they advocate for horrendous cutbacks that have made the disparity in educational funding even more dramatic.   

The Connecticut Parent’s Union, and the NAACP gave their support to Tanya McDowell.  There was also a petition with 15,600 signatures that also supported her fight to avoid incarceration.

Gwen Samuel, who heads the Connecticut Parent’s Union, had this to say as to why she supports Tanya McDowell:

“She [McDowell] understands something about the importance of education…I’m disappointed and I’m scared… I’m afraid of a system that would rather arrest me for being a good parent than help me raise my child to be a productive citizen.”

Thurgood Marshall and Malcolm X

We can clearly commend Thurgood Marshall for using his skills to defend individuals like Joseph Spell. As the film Marshall documents, Marshall’s life was threatened many times because of his defense of Black rights. However, Marshall also believed in the rule of law and felt that change would only come about through actions like his in attempting to change the law. For these reasons Marshall opposed the politics of Malcolm X.

Malcolm argued that the government Marshall attempted to reform was an enemy to Black people. He argued that the way to deal with racial discrimination was to gain control of the communities where Black people lived. Towards the end of his life, Malcolm supported the idea of socialism and was a strong supporter of the Cuban Revolution.

Today we can ask the question: Who’s strategy was more effective, Thurgood Marshall or Malcolm X? Clearly the attempts to reform the government did have positive effects. The legal system of Jim Crow segregation was pushed aside. Black people began to have educational and employment opportunities they never had before.

However, the average wage for Black people continues to be below that of caucasians. The system of Jim Crow segregation was replaced by a system of mass incarceration. The Supreme Court decision of McCleskey v. Kemp effectively legalized this discrimination. While the Supreme Court opposed separate education for Blacks and caucasians, Tanya McDowell went to prison for sending her son to a predominantly caucasian school district.

On the other hand, the Cuban Revolution has shown that when a workers government comes to power, there is a real possibility of doing away with racist discrimination.

After the Cuban Revolution there is a story that is pertinent to this discussion. A Black Cuban went to a barbershop and asked to have his hair cut. The barber refused. The Cuban returned to the barbershop with a police officer. The officer told the barber that he had a choice. He could cut the Black man’s hair, or he would be going to jail.

In my opinion, the Cuban government has been able to deal with this question because they follow the advice of Frederick Douglass when he said: “Banish the idea that one class must rule over another.  Recognize the fact that the rights of the humblest citizens are as worthy of protection as are those of the highest and your problem will be solved.”

  

 

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[2]McFeely, William S. Frederick Douglass P.362

[3]The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass, Volume IV, P. 491-523