Thurgood Marshall

October 1, 2008
Gr 7 Up-Crowe opens by describing the restrictions that circumscribed the lives of African Americans, including Marshall, before and during the civil rights era, and then covers his childhood, education, and professional years. The author devotes several chapters to the man's brave and dedicated legal work for the NAACP, his strategy in the 1954 "Brown vs. Board of Education" case, and his years as Solicitor General and Supreme Court Justice, concluding with a chapter on his legacy as a civil rights giant. The book is generally admiring of Marshall and uses excerpts from primary sources to help readers become acquainted with both the professional who worked ceaselessly to improve civil rights and the private individual who had a well-developed sense of humor and expressed opinions in blunt and occasionally salty language. The text is supplemented with average-quality black-and-white photos. Although this book draws on recently published material, it does not significantly expand upon what can be found in James Haskins's well-written "Thurgood Marshall" (Holt, 1992; o.p.). Additional."Mary Mueller, Rolla Junior High School, MO"

Copyright 2008 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2008
Marshall served 24 years as the first African American judge on the U.S. Supreme Court, but thisbiography in the Up Close series focuses on his pioneer work as a lawyer and civil rights activist and on the landmark cases in which he fought segregation in public education and elsewhere. Framed by the detailed drama of the Brown v. Board of Education case, where, as lawyer for the NAACP, he successfully defeated the established separate-but-equal argument, the chatty, immediate discussionrelates Marshalls personal experience to the political history. Crowe is frank aboutMarshalls disagreements with Malcolm X and Martin Luther King and also about the racist insults (including the n-word) that were part of Marshalls experience as citizen, lawyer, and activist.Marshall argued 32 cases before the Supreme Court and won 29 of them, and the eloquent quotes from his speeches are the core of this biography. The back matter is extensive, withCrowe including personal discussion of sources.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)