The Thurgood Marshall Plan

Justice Thurgood Marshall

The DuBois Bunche Center presents the Thurgood Marshall Plan, a bold proposal aimed at targeting assistance and resources at urban centers with the most dramatic need.

The late Justice Thurgood Marshall is widely considered one of the major architects of America’s modern civil rights and human rights covenants. Many of the rights and opportunities celebrated by African Americans and others can largely be attributed to the work of this great jurist.

Marshall was born following the sunset of the aborted reconstruction period, an era that revealed the calcification of institutionalized racism within the labor markets, capital markets and education system of the United States.

Ironically Marshall’s birth also occurred during the dawn of the 20th Century Civil Rights Movement. Thurgood Marshall drew his first breath on this planet a few months after the launching of the Niagara Movement and a few months before the founding of the NAACP, an organization which would become the future vessel for his landmark legal victories on behalf of equal opportunity.

The recent election of the first African American President of the United States calls upon the advocates for expanded justice to acknowledge that this historic victory is in part a result of Thurgood Marshall’s lasting legacy and transformative impact on the social history of the United States.

Indeed, the election of Barack Obama occurred during the centennial birthday of Justice Marshall. The inauguration of President Barack Obama coincides with the 100th anniversary of the founding of the NAACP. The man and the organization are representatives of all the icons for justice and equal opportunity who dared to believe and to conceive of the historic inauguration that took place on January 20, 2009. Ten decades following the birth of the 20th Century Civil Rights Movement and the birth of Thurgood Marshall, the heirs of this historic movement are challenged to imagine a new future.

Today those who believe in justice and equal opportunity are compelled to ask the question “Where do we go from here?”

After progressively harvesting some of the gifts of equality and justice that were bequeathed to us by the patron saints of the Freedom Movement, we now ponder “What would Thurgood do?”

The Dubois Bunche Center believes that the election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States necessitates a renewed commitment to develop new laws and policies that will depose the last vestiges of inequality and systemic racism within U.S. civil society. These actions will be in keeping with the legacy of Thurgood Marshall.

While we acknowledge the evolution of equality within our nation’s body politic our popular culture and our public spaces we also observe the longstanding obstacles to economic justice that continue to beleaguer people of color and to diminish Americas promise.
The DuBois Bunche Center has concluded that a priority for our contemporary human’s rights movement must be the development of a comprehensive program of action that will save the African American community and other people of color from the crippling impact of asset and wage disparities.

The day after Barack Obama was sworn into office the unemployment rate for African American men and Latino men in New York hovered near fifty percent. Following President Obama’s inauguration many African American owned businesses were crippled as a result of the global financial crisis, and the policies of the previous president which failed to support African American businesses.

The DuBois Bunche Center believes that the resolution of this crisis must be embraced as a moral imperative for all advocates of justice and equal opportunity.

In this spirit we offer a proposal entitled the Thurgood Marshall Plan an initiative that complements President Barack Obama’s stimulus recovery program, by creating new localized systems for employment opportunities and business development within urban centers. The Thurgood Marshall Plan creates a model for economic recovery that is grounded in the values of equity and economic justice. To this end we respectfully urge our State lawmakers, City lawmakers and all advocates for economic justice to embrace the core principles inherent in the following Thurgood Marshall Plan.

Download the Thurgood Marshall Plan.