Hoover didn’t let the issue drop there. He decided to call Marshall’s bluff and embarrass him in front of the attorney general. Hoover dared Marshall to give him the names of people who claimed to be victims of FBI wrongdoing in the South. Marshall was trapped. He didn’t want to appear to have made up the complaints, but he was more concerned that if he gave Hoover the names of the people, FBI agents and local authorities would go after them. Marshall decided not to release the names, and a newly defiant Hoover held fast to denials that his agents had looked away from criminal actions by white police.
Hoover had headed the FBI since 1924 and was deeply entrenched at the bureau and in political Washington. Clark was Hoover’s boss, but he understood that by 1946 Hoover had seen attorneys general come and go. He also had to face the fact that Hoover was right—the laws were weak and difficult to prosecute. In January, Clark wrote to Marshall that after his review he felt it was not fair to blame Hoover’s agents for the continuing problems facing black people in the South.
Marshall was irate that Hoover had outmaneuvered him. But worst of all, Marshall was in a weaker position than when he started. The FBI and Hoover now considered him an opponent and were less likely to take strong action against race crimes in the South. Marshall decided his only choice was to travel to Washington and speak with the attorney general himself.
Marshall had no assurances that Clark would make the time to see him. But Clark was sensitive to President Truman’s need to hold together a Democratic Party that was splintering after the death of Roosevelt. He recognized the NAACP’s growing political clout, not only with blacks but with moderate and liberal whites. When Clark decided to meet one on one with Marshall, it was a sign not only of the NAACP’s power but also of Marshall’s growing status as the nation’s best-known civil rights attorney.
In the meeting Clark caught Marshall off guard by agreeing that the government had to do more to end attacks on black people. And the bow-tied Texan said he wanted tougher antilynching laws. Just when Marshall felt he had Clark totally on his side, the attorney general engaged the young lawyer in a long conversation about the need to keep an open line to Hoover and the FBI. The bureau, Clark insisted, was the only federal agency in position to keep watch over the bigots in southern police departments. He persuaded Marshall to tone down his criticism or risk alienating a potentially powerful ally in Hoover and the bureau.
When Hoover found out about Marshall’s visit with Clark, the FBI director sent a sharp letter to Walter White, whom he had known for some time, complaining that Marshall was hurting the NAACP’s reputation and relationship with the FBI. “I wanted to bring to your attention a situation which is causing me increasing concern,” he wrote. The hostile lawyer, he charged, had repeatedly tried “to embarrass” the FBI and to discredit the bureau’s investigations, “particularly of cases involving civil rights of Negroes.”
Hoover charged Marshall with being dishonest. “I, of course, recognize the right of Mr. Marshall to have a personal opinion.… I do not think, however, that when Mr. Marshall in his official capacity, addresses a letter to the Attorney General of the United States relating to the work of the Federal Bureau of Investigations [sic] he might reasonably be expected to be truthful as to the facts in the situation about which he complains.”3
White didn’t fall for the bait. In a show of support for Marshall, he simply wrote a letter asking the FBI director to talk face-to-face with Marshall. Stubbornly, Hoover refused. “I note that you suggest that much good might come if Mr. Marshall and I … talked frankly with each other,” he responded. “I think that this would have indeed been the proper procedure … before Mr. Marshall resorted to gross misstatement and unfounded accusations against the Federal Bureau of Investigation and my administration of it.”
Despite his support of Marshall, White was very sensitive to the possible political fallout from a battle with Hoover. White continued to court the bureau’s leader because he knew the NAACP could not afford to be on Hoover’s hit list. In April, White even asked Hoover and Tom Clark to write messages of support for the NAACP. The letters were for a publicity drive to proclaim the group’s patriotism and allay charges that they held Communist and antigovernment sympathies. Both men responded with kind words. Hoover wrote: “Equality, freedom and tolerance are essential in a democratic government. The NAACP has done so much to preserve these principles and to perpetuate the desires of our founding fathers.”4
Hoover’s good feelings with White continued through the summer of 1947 and hit a high point when he finally agreed to a private talk with Marshall in October. Hoover decided this was a good chance to size up the civil rights attorney, whom he had never met. Marshall had to go onto Hoover’s turf for the meeting, but he, too, wanted the chance to size up his opponent. The encounter was initially very polite, with coffee for Marshall and introductions to some of Hoover’s top aides, who sat in on the meeting. Through all the niceties, Hoover made it clear to Marshall that no sane person would want the FBI as an enemy. And he said the bureau would be glad to have Marshall as a friend.
Marshall had come to the meeting with instructions from White to go slow and not upset the NAACP’s tenuous peace with Hoover. When the director held out the prospect of an ongoing and personal relationship, it appealed to Marshall’s desire for respect and power. Marshall, in turn, won Hoover over with his charming, good-ol’-boy, “I’m a little ol’ Baltimore lawyer” persona, which worked so well with southern sheriffs and politicians. As Hoover opened up to Marshall, the NAACP lawyer suggested that the FBI could use the NAACP as an ally against charges that the FBI was racist. But the FBI, he said, had to do a better job investigating racial attacks on black people. The meeting ended with smiles, handshakes, and promises to stay in touch.
The new relationship was evident a few months later when Hoover made handwritten notes on FBI case files involving a black man who had been badly beaten by whites in Washington, D. C. Marshall had written him about the incident, and Hoover wrote on the file that he wanted “very special attention paid to this case.” Hoover and Marshall seemed to have achieved a truce, if not peace, in their personal war.5
A few months later, however, in July of 1948, D. M. Ladd, one of Hoover’s top aides, wrote the director that an angry Marshall had called a New York FBI agent to report finding a listening device in his office wall. Ladd told Hoover, “It should be noted that the Bureau does not have and has not had a microphone installed on the NAACP.” Hoover was immediately concerned with the potential for public relations damage. He knew that Marshall would be able to get lots of publicity if he claimed the FBI was bugging him.
As a result of his relationship with Hoover, Marshall’s complaint about eavesdropping was immediately given serious attention. Hoover personally instructed his staff to handle the story carefully: “In accordance with your instructions,” Ladd wrote to Hoover, “I told [the New York FBI agent] to call Mr. Thurgood Marshall, to be very courteous to him, and to suggest to him that he endeavor to determine the make and serial number of the microphone from the instrument itself and thereafter, through the manufacturer, endeavor to determine to whom it had been sold.”6
Marshall described the device to the New York agent. The FBI man denied that the bureau used that kind of bug but told Marshall he would make calls to check on who might be interested in putting the NAACP under surveillance. Marshall was still suspicious and asked a private investigator, Buck Owens, to take a look at the situation. But Owens told Marshall he could not trace the bug unless he tore out the walls of the whole building.
The mystery appealed to Marshall’s mind. He wanted to know who had the power, the money, and the need to know about the NAACP’s affairs. He called in secretaries, the night watchmen, and the building superintendent to question them about the bug. To Marshall’s surprise the building superintendent came back a week later with the answer. “Hey, Mr. Marshall, I’ve found out about your bug,” the elderly man called out as he walked into Marsh
all’s office. “Calvert Whiskey owned that building before we bought it, and the vice president in charge of personnel bugged every room.”
Marshall was almost disappointed by the news. He thought he might have attracted the attention of some powerful segregationist. In fact, Marshall was gaining a higher national profile. His travels to deal with cases around the South, his many trips to Washington, both to the Supreme Court and to talk with members of Congress, made him an important voice on race relations. One measure of his new status was his meetings with Clark and Hoover; he also received his first honorary degree in 1947, from his alma mater, Lincoln University.
Marshall’s easygoing manner and lanky good looks also made him popular with average folks. “Thurgood Marshall is the amazing type of man who is liked by other men and probably adored by women,” wrote Michael Carter, an Afro-American columnist in a feature article on Marshall during this period. “He carries himself with an inoffensive confidence and seems to like the life he lives.”7
On the road Marshall’s casual approach to life, the law, and people meant he got along well with blacks and whites, even white racists. “I ride in the for-colored-only cabs and in the back end of streetcars—quiet as a mouse,” Marshall later said. “I eat in Negro cafes and don’t challenge the customs personally, because I figure I’m down here representing a client—the NAACP—and not myself.”8
As skillfully as he managed his public life, however, his family life continued to be a trouble spot. On March 3, 1947, Thurgood’s father died at home on Druid Hill Avenue of a heart attack. He was sixty-five. Willie had not been well for over a year, and he had worked only sporadically. But between his income and the money sixty-two-year-old Norma Marshall earned as a kindergarten teacher, they took care of themselves. The large funeral was a homecoming for a Marshall family that had grown apart. Willie Marshall’s brothers and sister, as well as his children, buried him at Arbutus Cemetery in Baltimore.
Thurgood also struggled with his own home life. His NAACP work pulled him out of town three weeks during most months. And when he was at home he and Buster had to deal with constant frustration and the grief that hung over their inability to have a child. “Buster had a weak uterus,” said Alice Stovall, Marshall’s secretary at the NAACP. “And Buster became pregnant quite a few times because she said she knew how much Thurgood wanted children.”
Bob Carter, Marshall’s top aide in the NAACP’s legal office, often kept Buster company. “Buster liked to play cards, and I’d sometimes come over and play cards with her and a friend,” Carter said. “And Thurgood might be away. He was away a lot.”
And on the rare days when he was home, the couple loved to entertain their friends. Buster was especially proud of a new apartment she found for them, a two-bedroom at 409 Edgecomb Avenue in Harlem. Alice Stovall recalled that Buster began to call her to occasionally come over to the new place for “Thurgood’s famous crab soup.”
As a well-known black American, Marshall also got invitations to meet several of the stars who were then breaking the racial barrier in professional sports. After Jackie Robinson, the first black baseball player in the major leagues, began to make some money, he had every charity sticking its hands in his pockets and could not manage his money. Branch Rickey, the Brooklyn Dodgers’ general manager, decided it would be best if another black person helped Robinson with his financial problems. Marshall was not a tax lawyer and on his NAACP salary had little experience in saving and investing large sums of money. But as the best-known black lawyer in New York and the nation, he was the man Rickey called. Marshall was thrilled to be asked and held two meetings with Robinson to work out a financial plan.
Marshall’s interest in sports was literally colored by his professional work on civil rights. He rooted for the Dodgers and Robinson but also for the Cleveland Indians, who had the first black player in the American League, Larry Doby. In football he liked the Cleveland Browns, again because they had black stars, Marion Mottley and Buddy Young. Marshall, however, denied to a New York Post writer that he was prejudiced in favor of black athletes: “Why I just love to see Spec Sanders lug that ball for the football Yankees and Spec is a white man from Texas.”9
Other than sports Marshall enjoyed playing cards. He did not have time or money for big-money games but was known to win or lose a few hundred dollars while traveling or at all-night games among lawyers, doctors, and businessmen in Harlem. In the late 1940s his annual income was about $10,000. But his constant travels meant he lived on his expense account most of the time; his NAACP paycheck went to Buster.
With the success of the NAACP’s legal work, Marshall’s reputation grew. His regular appearances before the Supreme Court also boosted his standing among lawyers. As a result of his high profile, Marshall’s name regularly came up when federal judgeships began opening to blacks in the late 1940s. In political circles, speculation about Marshall becoming a judge peaked in 1949, when Congress created four new judgeships for the southern district of New York. The press wrote that President Truman was seriously considering naming a black lawyer to one of the positions.
There were only a half dozen black men in the nation, including Marshall and Bill Hastie, who were considered qualified for the federal bench. The only sitting black judges were in low-level courts, such as the U.S. Customs Court or municipal court judges in Chicago and New York. They had been given their jobs as patronage appointments by their cities’ political machines.
As talk of an appointment intensified, the president of the NAACP, Arthur Spingarn, sent a letter to his nephew, Stephen Spingarn, who was an aide in the White House. Spingarn encouraged the administration to appoint Marshall: “Personally I feel that there could be no better choice for this [job] than Thurgood Marshall,” he wrote. He noted that Marshall had given political support to Truman when a black “left-wing group” condemned the president for not pressing for passage of civil rights bills. The New York Times, Spingarn noted, had recently quoted Marshall as standing up for Truman before black critics, saying the president had “done more … for civil rights than all other Presidents put together.”
Spingarn specifically asked that no “political hack” be given the new judgeship. It should be reserved for “a really good lawyer,” he wrote. “With the possible exception of Governor Hastie of the Virgin Islands and Charlie Houston, of Washington, Marshall is by far the best and most favorably known lawyer among the Negro public.… I think that Thurgood Marshall would be an outstanding choice.”10
Spingarn’s effort seemed to have paid off a few days later when the New York Post reported that President Truman would nominate Marshall for the federal judgeship. Similar news stories in Washington and Baltimore cited White House aides as saying Truman wanted to give him the job.
Marshall got further support from one of the country’s most preeminent figures, the former First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt. Mrs. Roosevelt, who remained close to Walter White, had come to know Marshall while she was on the NAACP’s board. Marshall’s secretary, Alice Stovall, remembered meeting Mrs. Roosevelt at the NAACP’s offices. “She stopped [in], and she said, ‘And who do you work for?’ And I said, ‘I work with Mr. Marshall.’ And she said, ’Oh, young lady, you are so lucky. I said, ‘Yes we are.’ ”
In August of 1949, Mrs. Roosevelt wrote to Paul Fitzpatrick, head of the New York State Democratic Committee, to urge Marshall’s appointment as a federal judge: “I understand that Thurgood Marshall’s name is being presented to the president for one of the new judgeships which has been ear-marked for a Negro. I do not think that there is anyone I know who would do a better service to New York State if he should get the judgeship. You and all of the others could be proud of him.”
Mrs. Roosevelt urged local Democrats to see Marshall’s value despite his lack of any ties to the political machine. “He has been so completely out of politics that I fear he will not know anyone to back him unless you know how good a person he is,” she wrote.11
While Spingarn, Truman,
and Mrs. Roosevelt wanted to give Marshall the judgeship, black Democrats in New York City did not support him. They wanted someone who was part of the Tammany political machine. A comment about Marshall appeared in a New York Post political column around that time in which an unnamed “local Negro Democratic politician” complained that Marshall had “never done any doorbell ringing for the organization.” Later stories in the Post said a black assemblyman, Harold Stevens, was New York’s black political bosses’ choice for the judgeship.
Eventually Paul Fitzpatrick decided that it was better not to appoint any black candidate than to defy Harlem’s political leaders. He sent word to the White House that he preferred not to fight with Harlem Democrats or the black lawyers and simply would not accept any black candidate for the judgeship. Marshall was out, and he was sorely disappointed. He saw the judgeship as a step up, in both pay and status.
The defeat left Marshall suffering internal doubts. He didn’t know where he was going next in his career. He wanted to move up, but given the segregation of the nation’s top law firms, the best hope for him seemed to be starting his own practice. However, his early failure as a private lawyer in Baltimore made him afraid to give up the guaranteed pay and the NAACP’s national platform. To keep a wider and wider sea of personal doubt at bay, he lived his day-to-day life on an island of frantic activity. And increasingly he spent his time battling with Communists inside his own organization.
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