An affectionate and engaging biography of the ``rumpled bear of a man'' who served as the liberal conscience of the Supreme Court, and as its first African-American justice, from 1967 until his retirement last year. While today many know Marshall from his Supreme Court years, his signal contributions to civil rights came as an NAACP lawyer. Clark, a former Time magazine writer, and Davis, a professional journalist (The Atlanta Constitution, etc.), describe how Marshall's career, like those of many great lawyers, was shaped by an influential law professor—in Marshall's case, Howard University's Charles Hamilton Houston, who conceived of civil litigation as a method of social engineering. In 1935, after graduating from Howard, Marshall assisted Houston in a suit that compelled the University of Maryland to admit African-American applicants. Marshall went on to investigate lynchings in his home state of Maryland, to win salary equalization for Baltimore's teachers, and to assist in organizing boycotts—but it was his stirring appellate advocacy before the Supreme Court that won him lasting fame. Marshall won 29 of the 32 cases he argued, including Smith v. Allwright, which won voting rights for disenfranchised African-Americans; Shelly v. Kraemer, which struck down racially restrictive covenants; and the landmark Brown v. Board of Education, which struck down legal segregation in education. After his appointment to the liberal Court of Earl Warren, Marshall formed part of the majority; as the Court became more conservative, he found himself increasingly in dissent. The authors supply much anecdotal detail about Marshall's colorful personality and robust humor (when President Nixon inquired about Marshall's health when the justice was hospitalized, Marshall responded, ``not yet''). Above all, Davis and Clark show that, though Marshall ended in isolation on the Court, his life and career resulted in lasting achievements in civil rights. A warm and fitting tribute that provides an excellent examination of the development of Marshall's jurisprudence. (Twenty-four pages of photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 1-55972-133-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Birch Lane Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1992
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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