A Dialogue with Minnie Pearson and Erik McDuffie on Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall, civil rights lawyer and chief counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), speaks before the reunion of the 369th veterans' association in New York City, Sept. 23, 1956. Associated Press
In February, for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Illinois Public Media's Brian Mackey spoke with Minnie Pearson and Erik McDuffie about Thurgood Marshall.
Thurgood Marshall was the first African-American justice on the US Supreme Court, and many years before that, a prominent civil rights lawyer. He argued more than 30 cases before the nation's highest Court, including Brown vs. Board of Education, where the Supreme Court ruled that separating children in public schools on the basis of race was unconstitutional, leading to the desegregation of schools.
On Dialogue, we'll also look towards Marshall's visit to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, on March 8, 1956. Marshall visited UIUC to talk about his work and the many cases of segregation in Illinois. He also discussed the murder of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old boy from Chicago who was abducted, tortured, and lynched in Mississippi after offending a white woman in 1955.
GUESTS:
Minnie Pearson
President of the NAACP in Champaign County
Erik McDuffie
Associate Professor in the Department of African American Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign