Streaming Between the Lines - Marshall

[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hello, welcome to Call It Like I See it, presented by Disruption. Now, I'm James Keys, and in this episode of Call It Like I See it, we're going to continue our streaming between the Lines series and Discuss Marshall, the 2017 biopic of Thurgood Marshall. The movie follows Thurgood Marshall, who many know as the First African American U.S. supreme Court justice, as he worked on a case from earlier in his career, the 1941 case, the state of Connecticut v. Joseph Spell. The movie gives a good picture of not only the kind of lawyer Thurgood Marshall was, but also the environment he was operating in and how that environment, in some ways is very different from the environment today, but in some ways is still very similar. Joining me today is a man whose name you'd love to touch, but you mustn't touch. Tunde. Ogonlana Tunde. Are you ready to show the people how you turn it up to max power? [00:01:18] Speaker B: Yeah, man, I just am. I don't even know what to say that it was the first time you serenaded me in that show. So I'm not sure where we're going here, but I'm not sure what Thurgood Marshall would say right now. Let's leave it at that. [00:01:36] Speaker A: All right. All right. Now we're recording this on November 19, 2021, and I want to get right to our conversation today. Most Americans have heard of Thurgood Marshall, and he's probably best known as the attorney who successfully argued the Brown v. Board of Education case at the U.S. supreme Court, which knocked out racial segregation in schools, and also later was appointed as a justice on the US Supreme Court. But this movie really showed us a different side of him, showing him when he was more of a younger, fledgling attorney with the NAACP running around from town to town to defend people believed to be wrongly accused because of their race way before we would recognize him as a legitimate world changer following the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. Now, we're not going to give away too much of the story, but I must warn that there will be spoilers in this podcast, but even with them, the movie would still be enjoyable. There's a lot going on in the movie that would make it enjoyable regardless if the historical record is known to you. So, Tunde, to get us started, what stood out most of you in the. [00:02:47] Speaker B: Movie, you know that's an unfair question. [00:02:54] Speaker A: Had you said, especially the way I sprung it on you like that. [00:02:56] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:02:57] Speaker A: Out of nowhere. [00:02:58] Speaker B: Yeah. No, no, no. It's unfair because it should be like, what are the 18 things that stood out to me. That's why. [00:03:03] Speaker A: Well, most. Most. [00:03:05] Speaker B: Cause even most, I mean, it's. It's, you know, I'll share a few of the things that did stand out. That's why I'm just joking around to say, you know, it was. It was a very good movie for reasons I know we'll get into. [00:03:17] Speaker A: But. [00:03:17] Speaker B: But some of the things that stood out to me, I'll say this. I mean, one of the reasons that I liked it and I shared it with you offline was I'm not an attorney like you, so I'm not used to seeing some of the mechanics of not only the courtroom itself and what we would consider the legal arguments and back and forth, but then what I would say is more of the courtroom drama, the theater that goes around it. So I would say I think a lot of the scenes were well done and in that way that stuck out to me, the acting generally, I thought was very good from a lot of different actors, which I'll get into a little bit later. And I think the thing that really stuck out to me most, though, from a kind of just an emotional level and a while kind of people really had to deal with this level is, you know, a reminder that in 1941, just being a black person in America was very difficult on an everyday basis. That's, you know, we, we. It's. It's easy to just bring up in your mind, oh, yeah, there was segregation. I remember seeing pictures in books or on documentaries about whites only lunch counters and fountains for whites and. And separate fountains for blacks and all that kind of stuff. But to see it in the way that they depicted the everyday nuances of constantly being reminded that you are other, that you're a second class, that you're not part of the kind of mainstream group in the country, yet you're a citizen and you're still expected to love the country, pay taxes and do all these things. I think we forget or not forget. We didn't live during that time. I don't think we appreciate those of us that are as young as we are, how difficult that was. And I think how. What a beautiful story it is of triumph for people like Thurgood Marshall with everything he faced, not only as a professional and the hurdles he faced professionally, but personally in terms of the threats, you know, the scene where he got beat up, things like that. So that I would say, you know. [00:05:28] Speaker A: What'S interesting, you say that. [00:05:29] Speaker B: It's a profound kind of standout to me. [00:05:31] Speaker A: Oh, sorry. But no, no, it's interesting you said, because we've heard in the past year or two people talking like things are worse from a race standpoint that they. Than they've ever been. [00:05:40] Speaker B: And it's like they didn't watch movies like Marshall. [00:05:43] Speaker A: Well, you can. You can forgive them. Obviously, they weren't alive at that time, but at least try to be a little more informed. You know, when you say stuff like that, like, no, things aren't worse now than they've been since slavery. Like, that's like. And I'll say, like a ridiculous statement. Yeah. [00:05:58] Speaker B: And that's a great point because you and I have spoken about this on different shows and personal convers, which is. You're absolutely right. Clearly, things are a lot better for blacks in this country than they were in 1941. Than they were in 1841. Right. So I think what you and I look at is that is the beautiful progress of the country, and, you know, we need to recognize progress, but it's not finished. I think that's kind of what I've taken from that. [00:06:25] Speaker A: Yeah. And I would say, though, for me, what stood out the most is actually how corrosive bigotry is. And for all those involved, like the bigot, it's corrosive on the bigot as well. Like, the overarching plot of the movie involved an accusation of rape by a white woman against a black dude. And then the trial is all about that. Marshall's there because they believe that the accusation was false, and they have to unravel how and what all happened, basically. And there were some twists and turns along that way, but the movie revealed that basically with the woman who was the accuser, she was in a bad place, so to speak, in her life. But then what went on in the movie showed it caused her extreme pain to the point that she's losing her mind over just the idea of interacting, her having interactions with the black dude, you know, like. And it's. It's amazing to me how corrosive that can be. And then it's corrosive on, obviously, the oppressed side as well. The. The. Because people go out of their way to try to put you in a compromising situation or to screw you up or to mess you up and so forth. And so everybody come. Everybody loses in that transaction. And so to see that is just. It's. It's shocking to see just from the standpoint of when we experience that stuff as far as the way things were, it's in still photos or even black and white videos it's hard to kind of really internalize. Like, man, that is. There's a lot of pain there. There's a lot of, you know, even the inflictor of the pain and the person who's receiving the pain being inflicted on them. And it reminded me of Martin Luther King talking about the civil rights movement being necessary to save the soul of America. And he talked a lot about how the white supremacy disease is going to. Is bad for white people. You know, it's not like, yeah, obviously black folks would like, yeah, get your foot off our neck. Or, excuse me. Yeah, get your foot off our neck. But it's not good for the oppressor either, you know, so that really stood out to me in terms of how I thought the movie did a good job of kind of showing that without parading it in front of your face all the time, but just nobody was coming out really as the winner there, you know, and then in terms of some of those transactions. Now, obviously, other times people are. But there's baggage involved in that. [00:08:56] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think we've talked about this offline, too. A very few benefit from that type of setup because it's really the divide and conquer strategy. So it's gonna be your robber barons that benefit from this type of. When the nation. I mean, it's kind of like the planner class in the south pre Civil War. Right. [00:09:19] Speaker A: I just thought of Lincoln when you said that. [00:09:20] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:09:21] Speaker A: It's just that he couldn't understand why the poor whites didn't understand that if the blacks are equal, that makes them stronger. That removes an ability for the planner class. It makes the poor whites stronger. Because as long as the blacks were held under the poor whites, the planner class could always undercut the poor whites with the blacks as far as, oh, well, we can get a black guy to do it. Or, you know, it suppressed their wages. And Lincoln couldn't understand that. Why he couldn't convince people that. But go ahead. I'm sorry. No, no, no. [00:09:53] Speaker B: I mean, that's just classic divide and conquer. And it's been done in different ways in this country. I mean, one of the good examples was during the unionization periods of the 20s and 30s in the steel industry in Pennsylvania. You know, that was one of the times when blacks and whites were actually coming together. And Carnegie and his guys smartly knew that one way to break that up is to create some sort of fracture between blacks and whites. And what did they do? In one of the mining towns, steel mining towns, they put out there a fake accusation that a Black guy had raped a white woman and something like that. And it caused immediately this tensions. And guess what happened? Unions didn't form, the workers stayed getting screwed, and Carnegie and his guys kept making money. So it's a classic American tactic of divide and conquer and distraction by bringing up racial issues to stoke kind of fear and biases that are already there. So I think this movie also did a great job of that showing that. Because again, it showed that, like you're saying in 1941, probably the greatest faux pas in the United States was a black man being with a white woman. And she even she was able to lie, understanding that by saying he raped her, it would definitely take away the idea that she had a consenting relationship with him. Because remember, she was of high society in Greenwich, Connecticut. And so one of the greatest ways to get booted out of high society at the time was obviously to be seen as a beautiful blonde woman who chose to have a relationship with a black man. So, you know, in order to avoid that, she. Because she was worried she was pregnant. For those, you know, who would wonder, why would she just not just say anything at all? So that way, if the pregnancy were real and it turns out it was his baby, she could say she was raped and at least saved her. [00:11:53] Speaker A: It was irrational worry that she was pregnant, though. Cause she was worried that she was pregnant, like immediately thereafter. Like, it wasn't. Like a couple weeks went by and like, oh, hey, I think, well, hey. [00:12:03] Speaker B: We didn't see the whole thing basically. [00:12:05] Speaker A: At least the movie, like, the concept was like, oh, my God, if something remote happens here, I could lose everything. And so therefore I'm gonna just kind of lose it and snap. One of the other things I wanted to mention, because you actually just brought it up with the Carnegie example, was they did give us a illustration, though, on how even back then the media traffics in fear and outrage for profit. And so. And people are hurt by that. Like, just like today. Now it's different today it's more all consuming, I would say. You're not waiting for a newspaper to come every morning or in the evening or whatever. It's in your brain directly because it's in your hand on your phone all the time, or it's on your television repetitively all the time. So the media, the tactics are still the same in terms of. This is how you get people's attention. If you're talking, if you'd like. You made the example in past shows. If the media runs like C Span, nobody's watching because C Span is a bunch of guys up there talking, and nobody's that interested. But when the media talks about in that time, if they say, oh, there's an accusation by a white woman that was raped by a black man, that goes. That's. It happens in Greenwich, Connecticut, that gets picked up by newspapers all over the country, and people start firing their help all over the country just because of that. That. That headline. And so it's. It's something that we. That's still with us today. It's still in a different way, but just this. That's not new in terms of the media trafficking and fear and outrage. [00:13:32] Speaker B: Well, and that's what was, to me, so profound about the film, too, because it showed a lot of the kind of inherent cultural biases that we've developed over the generations here in America. That's kind of. Some of these things are unique to American culture. And that's why it's like, you know, white supremacy in the form it takes in America is pretty unique. And that's why sometimes people, like white folks from countries like Canada, England, you know, in other parts of the world will come to the United States and not even understand the way that certain Americans look at other people. And so one of the things that also stuck out to me when we. When we talk about some of the. The scenes that showed what life was like at the time for the average person who looked like you and I. And I would say not even average, because Thurgood Marshall, just the fact that he was a practicing attorney in 1941 as a black man, was clearly not average. I felt that the judge or the actor that played the character of the judge there, who did a great job in playing his role, because at the beginning, one thing they showed was during jury selection, it was pretty blatant. I mean, some of you remember this is 1941, so some of the white. Well, the whole jury was white. But some of the people that were being. As they were doing the jury kind of interviewing process, they were asking them directly how they felt about blacks. And people would say things like, yeah, I think they're prone to criminal behavior. I think that they're thieves and things like that. And. And I remember Thurgood Marshall kind of looking at the judge saying, you know, kind of like, I don't think we can. I don't think we want to accept this juror. And the judge looking at him saying, there's nothing wrong with this guy. He'll stay. [00:15:20] Speaker A: And so they do remember the reason it was that the jury was all white Wasn't because there weren't black candidates, but it was because the judge believed when the prosecution would challenge a black juror and say, we don't think he can be unbiased because of his race, the judge bought that. Like, oh, yeah, he can't be. But when it was there was reversed, and someone would profess racist sentiment, the judge would say, oh, well, but this person can set that aside in order to be unbiased. [00:15:50] Speaker B: That's what I think. But that's why I think the movie did a great job. Because that stuff still happens today. Maybe not that the judge is acknowledging this in everyone's face, but it's this idea of bias and how difficult it is to know biases from other people just to, you know, when you see them, and then how difficult it is for all of us as humans to rid ourselves of our biases. And so that stuck out to me. And then the other part. [00:16:17] Speaker A: But I wanted to mention the judge real quick because I thought, well, I'm. [00:16:20] Speaker B: Still on that theme, so go ahead. Okay. No, because part of it was the other part because a lot of this kind of microaggressions and like, and macro aggressions. Because back in the day, it wasn't that micro. They tell you their face. So when I found it interesting, when Thurgood Marshall asked, can I be heard? And the judge looked him right in the eye and says, no, you cannot be heard in my courtroom, basically saying, no, I'm not going to let you, as a black man, act like a lawyer in here. And then he went on. And so then it was like a little bit deflating, you know, and it was kind of like, oh, he's going to, like, say that this guy can't even be in the room. And then he went on to some monologue about he's going to allow Marshall to be the co counsel because he wanted to maintain the appearance of fairness. And I wrote that down because it was interesting, because it showed kind of the dilemma that I thought of, like a state like Connecticut, because it's in New England, Northeast, in the Deep South. They didn't care as much about the appearance of fairness. They were proud to just show that they were bigots. Right? Like, we don't want to let blacks in at all. I feel like because it was New England, they were racist there, too, to, you know, very racist. But they wanted the appearance of fairness. [00:17:39] Speaker A: They didn't want people to. They. They wanted people to think that they're better than they are in the South. [00:17:42] Speaker B: Correct. [00:17:43] Speaker A: Like that. So. But they didn't want to live up to that. [00:17:45] Speaker B: Correct, Exactly. That's my point. And that's why. And that's why even, you know, just. And so the thing is, is that the interesting thing is that they allowed Marshall to be co counsel, but the judge wouldn't allow him to speak a word in the courtroom, which was interesting. [00:18:03] Speaker A: And I remember then that was the conditions. Marshall was a Maryland attorney. And so normally attorneys can be admitted. It's called pro hoc viche in some cases. But it's one matter only. You go to another court and you can in another state or something like that, and an attorney from that state would have to sponsor you and you know, say, hey, you know, this guy wants to, to be admitted for this one case. Normally that's a formality. And Marshall said, you know, I've been judges that are grand jagons in the KKK that have allowed me to do this, you know, that allow me to be counsel for the, for the one matter only. So that was, that was, you know, it was. [00:18:37] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I was going to mention that when he talks about. [00:18:40] Speaker A: I want to. Because we got to, we got to get to the next part. But I want to mention one thing with the judge and I thought the judge did a really good job, the actor did a really good job and portraying this, because what he really. And I don't think we can contemplate this just consciously, whether it be me and my profession as attorneys or just society at large, is that there is an inherent tension between the rule of law and equality under the law. Everybody should be equal under the law. The rule of law being the number one decider of outcomes. Not who you favor or who you like or who you dislike, but the rule of law, equality under law. There's a tension between that and human nature that we don't really seem to acknowledge. But rule of law is like radical. Like that's a radical idea. If you look at human history, if you look at all that's going on, like this is the way we are trying to do things here is very abnormal. Normally it's. If you're in a position of privilege, you just try to maintain your privilege. You're not trying to be fair under the law and trying to set up some, you know, somebody puts up the Magna Carta and it says, oh, the king, you got to be. You had to, you got to adhere to this as well. And it's like, nah, I'm the king, you know, so it's very radical, actually, this whole concept of rule of law. And the judges struggle with that. You saw him struggle with that throughout the case because on one hand he held himself in high esteem, that he is an arbiter of the rule of law and so forth. But he had his own biases. But as the progression went on, you saw him getting into a place where his biases, where he was pushing them back a little bit and trying to be more about the rule of law. But that's a judge. Judges are trained and are in those positions to do that. Imagine how hard it is for just us walking around to try to live up to that type of thing of rule of law and not just, well, if it happens to me, then it should be handled one way and it happens to somebody else that I don't like, it should happen another way. But if I do like them, it should happen a whole other way. And so it really is something that is, we have to acknowledge as radical and that we have to work to make happen on a day to day basis. Because if we don't, we will slip into our nature, which is favoritism, which is all that other stuff that we try to get away from. You know, when, when we put forth the rule of law. Yeah, I wanted to get to the next part. [00:20:55] Speaker B: Well, no, I was just going to say that my, my, my, you reminded me of something because my kids actually brought me a copy of the Magna Carta once and I actually told him to go jump in a lake. So you're right. It's difficult to give up the perch when you feel like you're in charge. [00:21:10] Speaker A: That's hilarious. So. Well, I wanted to add, like another of the main characters. Now, Thurgood Marshall was the main character, but as you mentioned, the judge, as far as courtroom proceedings, would not allow him to speak. And so Sam Friedman, which is a local Connecticut attorney, he was an insurance attorney, though, and it looked like he was doing insurance defense, which means you're working for the insurance company against injured people at the start of the movie. And he is the one who is helping Thurgood Marshall initially say, hey, I'll sponsor you so you can get admitted for this matter and then I'll step aside. But then he couldn't get admitted. So Friedman really picked up the mantle and Marshall was kind of bringing him along as far as how to do things, but he was the one up there making the case for the defense. What did you think about the portrayal of Sam Friedman and the prominent role he played in the story? [00:22:01] Speaker B: I mean, I thought the portrayal was great and you know, I thought the actor actually did a great job playing the role. It's good because, you know, it's one of these things. I mean, for those that aren't steeped into kind of history of, let's say, the civil rights movement of the middle 20th century, you know, the Jewish community played a big role in working with African Americans at the time, in helping out. And so I think the character of Sam Friedman, from kind of just a symbolic role was important. Obviously, the real guy and his real role in life was important. But the idea that, because it's also a message of unity in a different way, that no one group, especially a minority group, like black Americans, that at the time, I think were only 10% of the population, can really overcome that type of aggressive racism and legal segregation by themselves. And so the idea. [00:23:05] Speaker A: Yeah, you've said that in other shows, like, what, 10% of the population is going to stand up and make all these changes? That's very difficult. [00:23:13] Speaker B: Correct. And so it's not only. Cause there's another part of the movie that really stood out to me that I thought was pretty profound. I don't know if they actually took the courtroom transcripts and really, you know, went verbatim with certain things or if this was just something created for the movie. But it was near the end or really at the end when the. When the defendant was being asked, why did he lie? And he really gets emotional and talks about, you know, if he tells the truth about being with a white woman where he's from in Louisiana, means he's dead. [00:23:46] Speaker A: About being with a white woman, consensually, then he's dead. [00:23:49] Speaker B: Yeah. And so what happens is the prosecuting attorney, because he realizes that this guy made a very profound case and it probably moved the jury a bit and all that, and he asked the judge to have it stricken from the record. And by the way, for the audience that hasn't seen it, the judge happens to be a personal friend of that prosecutor's father, and they're at the country club together and all that. And it was a moment where the judge actually paused and you could see him really introspecting to your point, James, about really what's the right thing to do here? The law. And probably because he was an older man, understood that this guy was actually really telling the truth about what goes on in Louisiana. And maybe that was the moment where he wanted to make a contrast between his part of the country and how they'll treat people and maybe the Deep South. And he said that it would Stand and the jury will take this as into account. And it was another moment like that where you think about how many times in American history has a black man been in front of a white judge or police officer, someone who could really make or break somebody's life literally. And it was another example where this guy looked inward and actually was like, okay, I'm going to do the right thing for the moment and the law and allow this man's kind of emotional testimony to be recorded in this moment. [00:25:12] Speaker A: Yeah, because there was no legal reason to keep it out. And so it was basically, he had to make a decision between his principles of, like, rule of law and so forth versus his own bias. [00:25:22] Speaker B: But that's what I'm saying about comparing it to the Sam Friedman part, just to finish that up, is. And you make a good point, it shows that there had to be other people of principle who weren't black over this time. And let's just say not only 1941. Right. But through the decades of the early to middle 20th century, for at all. [00:25:42] Speaker A: Times, that's what's needed as well. Like, you need honorable people, people of principle from outside the oppressed group in order to make something like that. And that's not limited to black folks. That's any group that is subjected to oppression. It's never going to be just that group on its own that's going to be able to. To change the day, so to speak. You need principled people outside. Because if Thurgood Marshall would have argued Plessy v. Ferguson, for example, in the late 1800s, we might not remember him. Because at that time, the jurists in place were like, nah, you know, we don't. We'll figure out a way to make this not fly. And, you know, it took a Supreme Court that was willing to have an open mind and to strive for their better angels, so to speak, for Thurgood Marshall's arguments to get through at Brown v. Board of Education, or in this case, for Sam Friedman's arguments to get through to this judge. Like, well, hold on. There's no reason, legal reason, to do this. If you did this, you just be trying to fix the result. And that's something to me, actually, this is what stood out to me the most about the Sam Friedman portrayal is I always wonder why you look at American history and there's. There's people on both sides of the equality issue or the issue of trying to live up to our all men are created equal. There's people on both sides, but for whatever reason, a lot of people choose to identify with the people in the Confederacy or the people on the other side, basically, that lost. There are a lot of people they could choose. Just if they wanted, they could choose, hey, I identify with Abraham Lincoln or whoever. I identify with any of these people that Thaddeus Stevens, I identify with him who was a senator or a congressman, excuse me, during the Reconstruction, that actually was a big part of the equal Protection amendment to the Constitution. Anybody could choose to identify with them, but instead they'll say, no, I want to identify with Jefferson Davis or Robert E. Lee. And these are the people that I look to as the people that I hold in high regard, not the people that were on the other side. And so I always wonder, Sam Friedman is someone that. He didn't get into this because he wanted to change the world. He got into it at a happenstance. He was a man of principle, though, and that principle took him to a place. And this is at the end of the movie, they say he became a civil rights attorney because doing this opened up something in him that he liked and so forth. And so I just always. It never ceases to amaze me. Like, we were having the arguments about the Confederate monuments and stuff. It's like, well, why choose to identify that as your side? Like, why not choose there. There's people that. That oppose them. Why not choose to say, hey, that. That's the. That was. Those are the people I ride. Those are the Americans. If you're talking about Confederacy, the Confederacy were the guys that revolted that said they were out. And so it blows my mind. The other thing that about free, I. [00:28:32] Speaker B: Know you wanted to get to. In response to that is because it's fun, man, to go with the guys that'll stick it in everyone's eye. That's why, man. [00:28:39] Speaker A: I mean, that's something that's definitely. [00:28:41] Speaker B: It's fun to get rowdy and own all your enemies and all the other people. [00:28:44] Speaker A: You're being told it's emotionally. It's more emotionally satisfying. Yeah, it's satisfying. [00:28:48] Speaker B: And also the other answer is maybe some of those people are actually just frigging racist. You know, like, let's just be honest. [00:28:55] Speaker A: They do identify with. [00:28:56] Speaker B: They prefer to have segregation or slavery or they prefer to have people like you and I not be part of this society. So let's just call it what it is, right? [00:29:05] Speaker A: Hey, like, call it like you see it, man. Or maybe one thing I wanted to. [00:29:08] Speaker B: Mention, though, but maybe they just believe in states rights. Come on. [00:29:13] Speaker A: One thing I wanted to mention that the movie did. And I kind of wanted your reaction on it more than, like, I thought it was notable, but I didn't have strong feelings on it one way or the other. But the movie took care. This is 1941, that this is happening. The movie took care to show parallels between what was happening in Germany, the Nazism, master race, all that type of stuff, and what a lot of people were doing here or trying to do here, or the kind of the emotions that people had towards either Jews or blacks in America. And I've mentioned to you this before. Like, we. We talk about the World War II now. Like, oh, yeah, Americans were on the side against the Nazis. But when we say it like that, it's very reductive. It's not like 100% of Americans were, you know, 100% of Americans weren't like, yeah, we have to stand up to this Nazism or whatever, and we have to go in there and we have to knock it out. There were many instances where Americans were against that, so to speak, or there were either the American Nazi party, in fact, or others. So what did you think about how the movie showed the parallels between that and. Actually, that was something where Sam Friedman drew strength from, is that this is a similar struggle to what is happening with Jewish people in particular. To him, it was like his wife talked about one of her cousins that was getting picked up and things like that. And so they showed it up as a personal level to Friedman. But what was your. Did you take anything notable from that? [00:30:43] Speaker B: I mean, I think it's kind of the same vein that you just alluded to. I wouldn't say I took more than that, but it goes back to, like I said. Right. I think there's a special moment in. In the 20th century, let's say, for a generation from like you're saying. I mean, that was 1941. So there was already. People already knew what was going on in the kind of. Under the Nazi regime. Cause you had concentration camps already for almost a decade by then. And then we got into the war soon after. And I think that a lot of Jewish Americans and then after the war, Jewish immigrants that came from the persecution of the Nazi era in Europe. Because, remember, it wasn't just Germany. I mean, they took over Poland, Austria, Italy, other areas where there were a lot of Jews before the war and there weren't after. And we all know what happened. So I think by the 60s, that's where a lot of the Jews who felt that they had suffered oppression, they understood what that looked like. And here they are, especially the immigrants in this new country, that now they're watching similar types of things happening to another group. Like you said, about having just like. [00:32:00] Speaker A: Kind of a parallel mentality. Like the mentality, I thought. [00:32:03] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. The mentality of separation of this other. It needs to be either exterminated or kept to the side and kept oppressed. I think those are all things that just made this an interesting moment in time where enough people were, like we said, were able to support what African Americans had already been fighting and struggling to do. Enough non blacks began to Coalesce by the 60s, and that created the civil rights kind of outcome of that hard work from the. [00:32:39] Speaker A: Well, but it happened before that, though, because Brown v. Board of Education and the financing of the naacp, that stuff that wasn't just black people putting in money there. And so a lot of these cases that Thurgood Marshall would do, one of the things that Marshall was doing, going around city to city, state to state, where the media was involved, was taking on these cases, trying to win, which would then allow the NAACP to raise money to continue to build its organization to ultimately do something like Brown v. Board of Education. [00:33:10] Speaker B: And that's an interesting point because they did discuss the media between Sam and Thurgood in the movie. And it was interesting because Thurgood Marshall was concerned about the press and about the newspapers, and he wanted to get ahead of some of the potentially negative narratives that he knew and assumed that they were gonna write about the defendant that they were representing. And it was interesting because Sam Friedman at the time was naive a bit, and he's like, we're lawyers. Why do you care about the newspapers? And that's when Marshall was telling him. He's like, of course that matters because they're gonna sway the public opinion. And da, da, da. You know, so it was interesting, as. [00:33:50] Speaker A: The movie showed us, people were getting fired unrelated to this. Like, people across the country were getting. Black domestics were getting fired because of this accusation in Connecticut. [00:33:59] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:33:59] Speaker A: No, but it's like that's taking away people's livelihoods. I mean, the head of the NAACP said, you know, like, this is black domestics won't be able to work anymore if this thing continues to mushroom like it is right now. [00:34:12] Speaker B: Yeah. No, and that's what I'm saying is that because of Thurgood Marshall's just experience of life and understanding how the media, as you said earlier in this show, just like now the media is used to divide and manipulate kind of information. Back then, it was no different. And in Certain cases from a racial perspective, much worse and more blatant. I mean, they would just use some of these old, old newspaper headlines that just say, you know, four Negroes attacked a white woman yesterday on the subway, and it just would cause a white mob to go to the black side of town and burn everything down. And so, you know, and that's what I mean by that naiveness of Sam Friedman at the time, where he just. As a regular guy living and kind of keeping his head down as a kind of a Jewish guy in Connecticut, he just didn't have that same experience that they're. [00:35:02] Speaker A: Well, he didn't understand that Thurgood Marshall had to give the media something else to say that they thought they could sell, in addition to. They knew they could sell the tropes, but give them something else, too. You know, give them Thurgood Marshall up there saying this or something that they may be a little provocative, but give them something else to say, because if all they're saying is the stuff that they're tried and true tropes, then the outcomes are going to be worse and worse. And the last point I wanted to get to with you on this, actually, it goes into Thurgood Marshall and his kind of understanding of these things and his conduct and his actions. What are your thoughts really on the legacy of Thurgood Marshall and how he fits into the story of America? [00:35:44] Speaker B: I mean, look, his legacy, I think, is profound. As you mentioned, Brown versus Board of Education probably is one of the most landmark legal cases in U.S. history. And, you know, I don't think there's a. [00:36:01] Speaker A: Probably about it, man. [00:36:02] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I mean, so, yeah, it's definitely one of them. And I think, because clearly, had that case gone different, the whole history post 1954, that we know would have been a lot different. [00:36:13] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:36:13] Speaker B: And so. And so, you know, that I think is a huge legacy. And I think what stood out to me the most about him, and I'll say this, and this is why I think, you know, why the movie intrigued me so much. I knew who Thurgood Marshall was just from the kind of regular learning in high school type of stuff. But I never knew much about him or about anything other than he was a Supreme Court justice. And that's why I felt the movie was good, because it wasn't a movie about him on the Supreme Court or when he got nominated and how he's so happy. It was just about when he was in the trenches 25 years or 27 years before he became a Supreme Court justice. And really was just a young lawyer in his early 30s, just putting one foot in front of the other and dealing with the realities on the ground. And so what I would say is similar to the Founding Fathers. I'm not going to put them in the same class, but similar to the Founding Fathers. He's another cog in the wheel of American history and progress. And what he did was take what the Founding Fathers put together and basically made America have to live up to some of those ideals which were only written on paper prior to his hard work over the 50s and 60s. [00:37:37] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I would actually, I'd go further than you on that. I think that he is a Founding Father level of influence in American history. And I put it like in the same way that Abraham Lincoln was, like Thurgood Marshall changed the course of American history. America has been a segregated society longer than it has been a society where segregation is where equality rules the day, so to speak. At least under the law. The law didn't even account for equality prior to Thurgood Marshall doing Brown v. Board of Education and then topping that off, becoming the first black Supreme Court justice. I think that his influence in the 21st century is second to none from that standpoint. These are still fundamental issues that we deal with as a country. The country fought a civil war over this issue. And that puts Lincoln in that stratosphere that he's able to hold the country together relatively. I mean, they did secede and they had to fight a war, but able to hold the country together. Lincoln gets that type of Founding Father level influence from. Consider that. I think Thurgood Marshall is the 21st century version of that. What he did from the legal realm. And as. As you noted, he took the tools that were in place from the Founding Fathers and then from the Reconstruction era and actually use those to deliver or to bring society substantially closer to delivering on what is promised. And so you give a hat tip to the Founding Fathers. You and I have talked about this where people who want to say all bad stuff about the Founding Fathers, that's the wrong approach. Like, they didn't have to leave this. Put this stuff in there about all men are created equal. You know, they didn't have to put these things in as far as equality under the law, that they. In order to compromise, in order to bring the south in as it's told, you know, in order to bring the Southern states in, they have. There were compromises that had to be made on the issue of equality in blacks, but they still put in Easter eggs. So to speak that someone else later would be able to take and run with you. Combine that with the Reconstruction era. Reconstruction era amendments to the Constitution, and that's. Those are the tools that Thurgood Marshall used to change the course of American society. American society. Americans have only been an integrated society for 70 years. America is more than twice that old. You know, America is. Is much older than that. And, you know, you're talking 200 plus years. And most of that has been one way and the other way, that trajectory. The person who changed that trajectory was Thurgood Marshall. And so to me, I think it's inarguable from the standpoint of that level of influence, because absent that, absent arguing Brown v. Board of Education and the decision on that, I don't think you said this. We're not in this country right now. This is a different country fundamentally. [00:40:19] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. And it's interesting, too, because one of the things that stuck out to me from the film that you remind me, as you're saying, is there was a scene where he was kind of laying back talking to another guy, and they were talking about each other's grandfathers, and both of them mentioned how their grandfathers were slaves. And that intrigued me because it just was a reminder of how all of these kind of cultural wounds and the kind of racial stuff is still so fresh in America. Like you said, this country has been integrated legally and at least from a legal perspective, has been trying to live up to the ideals of equality that it so well professes in the Bill of Rights for a shorter period of time than the entire history of the country. Because what it made me think of, I started looking and doing my whole Wikipedia deep dive on Thurgood Marshall. So I saw he was born in 1908, and he passed away in 1993. And in 1993, I was 15 years old. That's what I think we forget sometimes. I was thinking, okay, so I was alive during the same time this guy was alive, and his grandfather was literally born as a slave. And so it just reminded me that even though we don't feel that we're that close to that period of time, we're not that far away culturally. Because, remember, we pass down culture, we don't just pass down genetics, like our hair and our eye color and all that. We pass down our culture and what our beliefs are to our kids and. [00:41:48] Speaker A: Our grandkids, cultural adaptations as well. Behaviors, things you do in order to kind of make do and survive. [00:41:55] Speaker B: Exactly. And the biases, like we talk about. [00:41:57] Speaker A: Right. [00:41:57] Speaker B: So. And so what it made me realize and just kind of reminded me is like, we see these kind of films, we hear these stories from usually one side, which is the side of the oppressed during that period of time. A lot of these shows about black, because no one's really making movies glorifying, you know, the slave owners and Klansmen and all that. But it reminded me that just like there's a guy named Thurgood Marshall whose grandfather was a slave, who could have been my grandfather or great grandfather that would have been teaching me things until he passed in my 15th year on the planet. There's another guy out there who's able to say my grandfather was a slave owner. And there's another guy out there, my age, whose grandfather died when he was 15, who was indoctrinating him with the culture of that supremacy, and we're better. And these people should have, you know, never gotten what they got and all that. And I think it reminded me of why we still have a lot of these tensions today, because we're still, Even though it's 150 years ago, post Civil War. I mean, like you said earlier, 70. [00:43:02] Speaker A: Years from segregation being unquestioned law of land. [00:43:06] Speaker B: Correct, but that's what I'm saying. Like earlier you said why some people still want to side with the Confederates or why we have to deal with a conversation about why Confederate stop statute should still be funded by taxpayers. This helps understand why, because it's really not as far away from a cultural standpoint as we feel. [00:43:25] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a good point. It gets to the way that all of us are kind of reductive of things. Like we look at, okay, who won? And so after we won, then everybody moves on, so to speak, and then that's a settled question. And that's not really how it works. There's two sides of something and. And somebody might win, but the other side might still hold their beliefs and they're just less prominent with them or they're equally prominent with them and just it's taken more of a backseat in terms of the national approach. But, you know, and that's a good point. [00:43:53] Speaker B: Yeah, well, and the other thing I realized because, you know, there's a few high profile cases going on during our recording of this show. Right. During the current case, and one of them is a well known case of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia. And let's see how that case plays out. But something that stuck out to me this week is that the attorney for the defense for the gentleman who killed Mr. Arbery because they don't seem to have much of a defense. He's been using the similar tactics of things. We've spent the whole show talking about. He three times, knowing that this is on TV and all that stuff, requested that the judge do not allow any black pastors in for fear of intimidating witnesses. And, you know, it just reminded me of, you know, he has every right to say that it's a free country. I don't care that he says it, but it just reminded me of, wow, he's just going back to the good old American playbook of race to try and just deflect and throw something out there, because he clearly doesn't feel he has the ability to defend his client without kicking up some kind of mud that involves saying black people like, you know what I mean? And it just reminded me. I was like, wow, here we are in November of 2021, and I just watched a movie about a guy in 1941. But it's the same. Same tactics of distraction, diversion, and let's see if we can use or stoke some biases in people to see if we can get them to believe our side, because the facts we have aren't in our favor. And so, you know, let's see if it works or not. But it was just an interesting kind of this week, like, just after seeing that movie, like, wow, this still goes on in the courtroom, and this guy's just blatant about it. Wow. Okay. [00:45:35] Speaker A: One other thing I wanted to mention was I think that what this movie also, and this may be me biased as an attorney, but I always look back historically and think that it's particularly the mid-1900s in the 20th century and think that the civil rights movement gets its due like it does. But the legal parts of it, I don't think necessarily get their due in terms of how significant. And the reason I say that is because even right now, there is a lot of energy and a lot of people who are ready to show up and demonstrate and protest and so forth. And that's good. That energy, when it's directed towards something you believe in passionately, you know that that's good. That's what we want. We want involved citizenry. But the legal aspect of these things, whether that be in court, whether that be exercising your right to vote, things like that, those things have to be placed on a equal plane to the emotional protest or the, you know, the emotion and emotional. We talked about emotional satisfaction earlier that you might get from protesting from, you know, getting out there in the streets and so forth. All of that is very good. But that can't be to the exclusion of legal avenues using the breadcrumbs that the founding fathers and that are built into the Constitution that are there for people to get equal treatment under the law, to get better treatment in these scenarios. We can't close our eyes to that stuff because as we speak, people change laws, which in ways that may be unconstitutional ultimately, but somebody has to go. If somebody change, if a state changes a law and you think it's unconstitutional, guess what, you still need people to actually sue, get to the Supreme Court and get it ruled unconstitutional. And so effort still needs to be put into there. Energy still needs to be put into there. And a lot of times, if those things are forgotten or aren't consider, are considered the boring things or not things that aren't prominently put forth, then we run the risk of being all energy, all passion and not enough strategy. And which Thurgood Marshall showed is the strategy. Being able to play in the system is very important as well. Those, these things have to go together. And that's, you know, you and I have had that conversation when, you know, in talking with other people, you know, you need both, like the people that are the protesters. I'm not saying don't protest, but don't poo poo on the people that are trying to do it in the other ways as well, because you need all hands on deck and everybody's not going to be doing the exact same job. So. But yeah, we can wrap it up from there. It's the movie, though, you know, like, we wanted to do the show on it because it's a worthwhile movie, especially where the country is now, but where the country has been, you know, and just perspective, something that, you know, it can give you. And also, again, like I said, a giant in American history, one who, you know, a lot of times you may not think of it, you know, like people should be talking about putting Thurgood Marshall on the $20 bill. You know, that's not, no shade to Harriet Tubman or Andrew Jackson. But, you know, like, if you're talking influence changing trajectory of America, you know, there you will find very few people who had more of that than Thurgood Marshall. So until next time, I'm James Keys. All right, thank you for joining us. Joining us on this episode of Call It Like I See It. Subscribe to the podcast Rate us, Review us, tell us what you think and we'll talk to you next time.