Thurgood Marshall Speech Analysis
Ezenwa Emejuru
Assignment 1
10/11/14
The speech Thurgood Marshall gave in 1987 was part of the constitutional bicentennial celebration. Politicians and Judges around the country were celebrating the "Founding Fathers" for their intelligence at writing a document that established the guiding legal principles of the republic for generations. But Marshall was one of the few people pointing out that the original constitution required numerous amendments, momentous social transformations, and came to a crisis that required a Civil War to solve.
Thurgood Marshall argued that a major compromise made by the founding Fathers in drafting of the Constitution arose from the contradiction between guaranteeing liberty and justice to European, while denying …show more content…
history. Marshall does not believe the United States is an impressive nation because of its Constitution and its founders, but because of those individuals who suffered, struggled, and sacrificed for freedom. Marshall views the bicentennial celebration as "oversimplified" and believes it "overlooks the many other events that have been instrumental to our achievement as a nation". He discusses the obvious fundamental flaw with the Constitution, which is, its exclusion of the abolition of slavery. Marshall argues that the slavery issue caused the corrupt understanding and forethought of the founding fathers and how they refused to address the …show more content…
Viewing the actions of the Supreme Court, he concludes that the court continued the mistakes of the past. Marshall refers to the court's opinion in the Dread Scott case as an example of the continued ignorance of the legal system toward African Americans. Marshall explains that Chief Justice Taney accepted the notion that the founding fathers were flawless because he took their opinions as pure fact. " 'We think they are not, and that they are not included, and were not intended to be included....They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order' ". Marshall illustrates that Chief Justice Taney and the Supreme Court made their decision on the basis of historical precedence. Instead of reexamining the meaning of "all men are created equal" and the morality and depression of slavery, the Court purely reaffirmed the prevailing opinion of the Framers regarding the rights of Negroes in America, Marshall
Assignment 1
10/11/14
The speech Thurgood Marshall gave in 1987 was part of the constitutional bicentennial celebration. Politicians and Judges around the country were celebrating the "Founding Fathers" for their intelligence at writing a document that established the guiding legal principles of the republic for generations. But Marshall was one of the few people pointing out that the original constitution required numerous amendments, momentous social transformations, and came to a crisis that required a Civil War to solve.
Thurgood Marshall argued that a major compromise made by the founding Fathers in drafting of the Constitution arose from the contradiction between guaranteeing liberty and justice to European, while denying …show more content…
history. Marshall does not believe the United States is an impressive nation because of its Constitution and its founders, but because of those individuals who suffered, struggled, and sacrificed for freedom. Marshall views the bicentennial celebration as "oversimplified" and believes it "overlooks the many other events that have been instrumental to our achievement as a nation". He discusses the obvious fundamental flaw with the Constitution, which is, its exclusion of the abolition of slavery. Marshall argues that the slavery issue caused the corrupt understanding and forethought of the founding fathers and how they refused to address the …show more content…
Viewing the actions of the Supreme Court, he concludes that the court continued the mistakes of the past. Marshall refers to the court's opinion in the Dread Scott case as an example of the continued ignorance of the legal system toward African Americans. Marshall explains that Chief Justice Taney accepted the notion that the founding fathers were flawless because he took their opinions as pure fact. " 'We think they are not, and that they are not included, and were not intended to be included....They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order' ". Marshall illustrates that Chief Justice Taney and the Supreme Court made their decision on the basis of historical precedence. Instead of reexamining the meaning of "all men are created equal" and the morality and depression of slavery, the Court purely reaffirmed the prevailing opinion of the Framers regarding the rights of Negroes in America, Marshall