ICYMI: Eric Holder Commemorates Justice Thurgood Marshall’s Legacy in Baltimore

For Immediate Release
September 30, 2024
Contact
Madia Coleman
coleman@redistrictingfoundation.org

Baltimore, MD – Last week, Eric H. Holder, Jr., the 82nd Attorney General of the United States, delivered the inaugural Thurgood Marshall Lecture to commemorate Justice Thurgood Marshall’s contributions to civil rights and social justice. In his speech, Attorney General Holder emphasized that Justice Marshall’s legacy of protecting and expanding civil rights throughout his career, as a lawyer and a U.S. Supreme Court justice, reminds all of us of what we should expect of legal professionals and citizens alike. 

The National Redistricting Foundation (NRF), the 501(c)(3) affiliate of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC), financially-supported and directed litigation on behalf of the Caster plaintiffs in Allen v. Milligan, a case that was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2023 that enforced  Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) and led to more representative maps in Alabama, Louisiana, and Georgia ahead of this year’s general election. In the Supreme Court’s upcoming term, which will begin on October 7, the Court is set to review another case coming out of Louisiana, Callais v. Landry,  that could again determine the future of Section 2 of the VRA. The NRF continues to provide financial and legal support to the Galmon plaintiffs who have submitted filings in that case calling on the Court to protect Louisiana's VRA-compliant map.

The full speech, as prepared for delivery, is below: 

The Honorable Eric H. Holder, Jr.

82nd Attorney General of the United States

Thurgood Marshall Amenity Center
Remarks As Prepared For Delivery

September 25, 2024

Good afternoon, and thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure to join so many public servants, members of the legal community, distinguished scholars, community activists and good friends as we celebrate an extraordinary jurist and the values that motivated him; as we lift up the ideals that he strove to uphold; and as we recommit ourselves to his unfinished work—and our own. 

In particular, I want to thank the Reverend Dr. Alvin Hathaway Sr. for his leadership of the Beloved Community Services Corporation. The work that you do every day is extraordinary. Through your programs, you are providing social, economic, and health-related support across the city of Baltimore, lifting up this beloved community and its citizens. And your efforts to restore and rehabilitate historic sites in Baltimore—including the building in which we stand today—help bring history to life and renew its promise. It allows us, as you have said, to stand on the shoulders of our ancestors; to enjoy borrowed blessings; and to find opportunities to pay those blessings forward. 

The life of Justice Thurgood Marshall is one of exceptional scope and breathtaking progress. The law school applicant rejected because of his race who went on to bring down legalized segregation. The great-grandson of a slave and the son of a steward at a Whites-only country club who became a Justice of the Supreme Court. The brilliant lawyer who never lost sight of the impact of the law and the meaning of its protection for the people it serves. 

That impact is real—and something that I know firsthand.

My father emigrated to this country as a young boy many years ago from Barbados. When he was almost 40 years old, he enlisted in the military during the Second World War. He wanted to stand against fascism, to stand up for his adopted country, and to fight for the freedom and democracy that America promised. And while he was serving in that war—while he was wearing the uniform of the country he promised to defend—he was told to leave a train car that was reserved for Whites only.

When I was a kid, schools and other public accommodations could legally refuse entry to men like my father. Stories like his—and many much worse—were commonplace. Yet because of Thurgood Marshall; because of the court that heard his case and decided in his favor; and because of the men and women who sat in, stood up and spoke out, that kind of state-sanctioned discrimination was struck down. And in the space of one generation, that devoted soldier’s son rose to become the 82nd Attorney General of the United States of America—the first Black attorney general, serving in the Administration of the first Black president to occupy the Oval Office.

Now, that arc was not simple nor straightforward. As so many of you may have experienced firsthand, this country has long had—and continues to have—a complicated relationship with equality and race. I have certainly seen, in my own life, how attempts have been made to make someone like me be made to feel powerless.  

I remember my father sitting down with me to have a conversation—the conversation—about how as a young Black man I should interact with the police if I was ever stopped or confronted in a way I thought was unwarranted. I will never forget the frustration I felt at being pulled over twice, and my car searched, on the New Jersey Turnpike, even though I’m sure I wasn’t speeding. Or the humiliation of being stopped by a police officer while simply running to catch a movie at night—in Georgetown, in Washington, D.C.—even though I was a federal prosecutor at the time. Or the sense of grim resignation after the murder of Trayvon Martin—when I sat down to have the same conversation with my son that my father had once had with me.  

I carried those experiences with me—not out of bitterness or resentment, but as a reminder of the space that still exists between what is and what ought to be. Though we have made great progress, though America is far more fair than the country that existed when that soldier was told to get out of a train car, the United States is still too negatively race conscious and not at the place consistent with our founding words. We are not yet a nation of full equality or real justice. 

I have tried to follow the words of Dr. King and help bend the arc of the moral universe  further towards justice.  As Attorney General, I tried to advance the idea that is the heart and soul of our democracy: the notion that every person deserves the equal protection of the law and an equal opportunity to exercise their rights. Over the course of my six years leading the United States Department of Justice, we worked to ensure that equality under the law was protected by the law. 

We took on issues of profound racial inequity in criminal justice, replacing “tough on crime” with “smart on crime,” and working to end the vicious cycle of poverty, criminality, and incarceration that put too many Black Americans in too many prisons for far too long—and for no truly good law enforcement reason. 

We stood up for communities of color that had faced discrimination in housing, education, employment and financial services, working to help those who had been abused and to shut down institutions that preyed on the poor.

We fought for fair access to the ballot box, calling for an end to felon disenfranchisement because Black Americans had been disproportionately and unfairly convicted of crimes; bringing aggressive legal action against states that enacted draconian and unnecessary voter ID laws aimed at suppression instead of suffrage; and standing up against voting restrictions even after a deeply flawed Supreme Court decision in the Shelby County case in 2013 undermined the Voting Rights Act.

In all these areas, we took on discrimination that has festered in this country for more than four centuries—since the date of the original sin when a slave ship carrying more than 20 kidnapped and trafficked Angolans arrived in Jamestown in 1619. 

We fought the dehumanization that is woven throughout our history—from the stain of slavery to the “strange fruit” of Jim Crow; from “massive resistance” policies to the stand in the schoolhouse door; from bloody attacks on a bridge in Selma to murders of Black men, women and children by people entrusted to keep them safe. And we spoke out against the tendency towards inertia that has allowed the cancer of racism to metastasize within our laws and institutions.

We operated with a simple understanding: that justice is not an abstract theory. It's a living and breathing principle. It’s about how our laws impact our daily experiences—and whether we live up to our promise as a nation and as a people. 

I am proud of the actions we took to advance opportunity and ensure justice for all. We made important progress, and laid the groundwork for more to come. Again, there’s little doubt that our country has traveled a long way on the road to equality. 

But “progress” is not a goal; it is a measure of commitment, a marker in time.  And it must be built on the foundation of hard truth. We don’t work for “progress.” We struggle for the end states of equality and justice.

Today, the hard truth is that—while this country has taken meaningful steps forward—we can no longer be content with this notion of stuttering, incremental “progress.” The hard truth is that—on major questions of race, policing, justice, education, democracy, and equality under law—“progress” too often masks the reality that we are still mired in the struggles of a bygone century.

How much longer must we wait to reach that truly free and equitable end state? How much further must we march to see the Promised Land?

How distant remains that elusive ideal that draws immigrants to our shores? How near is the “more perfect Union” our Founders envisioned… and left us the humble tools to create together?

My friends: this occasion is not just a time to look back, but to set a course for the future. 

And we can no longer afford to be patient!

In the 1980s, a reporter asked the great James Baldwin about the pace of change since the Civil Rights Era.

“What is it you wanted me to reconcile myself to?” he replied. “I was born here, almost 60 years ago. I’m not going to live another 60 years. You always told me ‘It takes time.’ It’s taken my father’s time, my mother’s time, my uncle’s time, my brothers’ and my sisters’ time. How much time do you want for your progress?”

And as Justice Marshall once said, we need to stop talking about how far we’ve come, and start talking about how close we are. 

And the simple answer is: we’re not close enough. There’s no denying that this struggle is far from over. Critical work remains unfinished. And it is a sad reality that, in some areas, we are in danger of turning backwards. 

Today, we face a backlash of bigotry that has turned Diversity, Equity and Inclusion into a slur. We face a slew of voting restrictions and gerrymanders across the country that have attempted to weaken voting rights—especially among Black Americans and communities of color. We face a Supreme Court that has been packed with situational originalists, who have waved away decades of precedent in cases from Shelby County to Dobbs—and just made stuff up in the presidential immunity case - in order to achieve ideological and partisan goals.  

These are real injustices from the justices. We cannot ignore these injustices. We must not accept them. Instead, we have to let ourselves feel them—and then fight for that which is right. 

By working to heal communities that have been torn apart by bigotry. By speaking out against discrimination where and when it occurs. By exercising our right to vote, and working with organizations like the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, which I am proud to lead today – to expand voting rights, promote fair maps, and ensure that every eligible voter in this country can make their voice heard. By refusing to let someone else’s problem, someone else’s challenge, someone else’s burden be theirs alone.  

Justice Marshall had many gifts. He was a brilliant thinker, an eloquent speaker, and a persuasive lawyer. But in my view, his greatest gift was his empathy. He knew at a very personal level what it meant to face discrimination. He had seen throughout his life and career the struggles of the poor and disenfranchised. And he remembered, to his last day on the Supreme Court, the capacity of the law to transform the rights, opportunities and expectations of Americans.  

That lived experience is what made him not only a remarkable figure, but an effective practitioner of the law; motivated to take on big challenges, and aggressive in rooting out injustice.

There’s an approach to jurisprudence that views the law as static. The law simply is – and it is up to lawyers to push for it, judges to interpret it, and executives to apply it. It’s an approach that, for years, allowed Supreme Court Justice nominees to say disingenuously that they saw their role as nothing more than that of an umpire calling balls and strikes. 

But I don’t see it that way. I see the law in the same way Thurgood Marshall did: as a mechanism to improve lives, to right wrongs, to heal wounds, and to achieve justice. I see our individual experiences not as biases that need to be cast aside, but as opportunities to recognize the humanity of others, and to access empathy for those who are struggling. I believe that empathy makes us better lawyers, better judges, better activists and better citizens. And I see our responsibility not only to apply the law, but to be active participants in the work of building a more fair, equal and beloved community.    

For those of you who are lawyers or expect to become attorneys  I hope you will ask yourselves: what would Justice Marshall think of the state of our judiciary today? More importantly, what would “Mr. Civil Rights” do? And what can you do to give life to a system that evaluates cases in a manner consistent with existing law and long precedent; protects the rights of citizens; and grounds decisions in our current and lived reality? 

For those of you who are working in politics and community service, I hope you will ask yourselves: how would Justice Marshall see our challenges through the lens of his own experience? And how can you apply your experience—your understanding, your energy, and your empathy—to bring us closer to our founding ideals? 

No matter who you are, I hope you will take action—beginning by exercising your right to vote. And then by going further—and committing  yourself to the solutions for the challenges of our time.

That is the opportunity and the obligation we all have in front of us. It is up to each of us to make our better future possible. It’s up to every one of us to exercise the full measure of our citizenship, and to make sure others have that same right. And it is up to all us to do our part to forge the stronger democracy and build the more just society that must always be our goal. 

That’s the way this nation has made progress for nearly two and a half centuries—not by some inevitable hand of fate, but by the actions of regular people who saw something wrong and committed to making it right. From the framers of a revolution to the engineers of emancipation; from women walking for suffrage to the marchers in Selma; from the abolitionist who asked, “Ain’t I a woman?,” to a young boy in Baltimore bound for the Supreme Court – generation after generation, this country has been built, rebuilt, enriched and improved both by and for the people. And that slow progress has transformed real lives.

It's an idea that Justice Marshall well understood: that each of us has a claim to a fair and equitable country, and each of us has a responsibility to make that country real. Always remember: positive change is not promised. It is the result of hard work, great sacrifice and focused commitment. Always understand: there will be opposition that must be overcome. There will be people who reflexively defend the status quo. There will be too many unwilling to acknowledge the injustices of the past and their impact on the present.  There will be ideologues who think that in the acquisition and maintenance of power no deed is wrong. The struggle will not be easy - it never has been.  But a focused and committed people have always brought about the change they sought. 

So as we take this moment to celebrate Justice Marshall’s life, I call on all of you here to recommit yourselves to his legacy—by taking real action on voting rights for every person in every community. By pressing for equality of opportunity, in every situation and every circumstance. By lending a hand to people who are too often let down, left out and left behind. By answering the call to finish that march towards justice—and the more perfect union that he helped to imagine. We have within us the ability to do all of this. 

Thank you again for having me here today. Thank you too for your passion and commitment. And thank you for all that you do to achieve the promise of our nation.

###