April 09, 2008

Forgetting Thurgood Marshall

"Grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure.”" -—Justice Thurgood Marshall

This one resonates pretty closely with the quote from yesterday and my thoughts about the negative impact of the Patriot Act. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you felt about the last post), I'm too tired to say much more about it today.

Instead I'll ask you how much you know about today's quotee, Justice Marshall. If the answer is "Not much," I invite you to read this article about one of the most influential Americans of the 20th century. Today's title is merely a play on the title of an upcoming movie (the billboards for which I've been seeing around a lot, so it came to mind quickly), by the way; Justice Marshall is someone we should most definitely not forget. He's someone we all owe a debt of gratitude to for shaping much of our current national identity. Others in the civil rights movement in America may have been more visible, but few had more lasting impact.