Transcript

9.17.26 · Smithsonian Magazine

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Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Rebecca Shore for Radio Eye, and today
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Speaker 1: I will be reading the Smithsonian Magazine, dated September-October 2026.
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Speaker 1: As a reminder, Radio Eye is a reading service intended
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Speaker 1: for people who are blind or have other disabilities that
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Speaker 1: make it difficult to read printed material. Please join me
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Speaker 1: now for the first article, which is Part 2 of
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Speaker 1: Stunning Antiquities and Frida Kahlo's Home are just some of
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Speaker 1: the offerings that have bolstered Mexico City's Fantastic Array of
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Speaker 1: Museums by Tony Perrottet. In Part 1, the author presents
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Speaker 1: Mexico City as a museum-rich metropolis whose collections and preserved
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Speaker 1: spaces reveal the city's layered history, from the buried remains
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Speaker 1: of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, to colonial, revolutionary, and modern
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Speaker 1: cultural landmarks. Part 1 emphasizes the surprising range of the
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Speaker 1: city's 171 museums, including major institutions, eccentric specialty museums, and
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Speaker 1: new archaeological sites emerging beneath hotels, cultural centers, and historic buildings.
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Speaker 1: Through visits with archaeologist Raúl Barrera, Part 1 highlights how
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Speaker 1: excavations around the sacred precinct, such as the Temple of
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Speaker 1: Ehecatl Quetzalcoatl, an Aztec noble school, and the Huey-Zampantli Skull Rack,
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Speaker 1: are reshaping public understanding of Mexico City's pre-Hispanic past. Part
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Speaker 1: One moves through museums connected to Mexico's colonial encounters, revolution,
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Speaker 1: and artistic renaissance, including sites devoted to foreign interventions, revolutionary figures,
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Speaker 1: and the muralist movement led by Diego Rivera. Part One's
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Speaker 1: strongest through-line is the power of intimate house museums to
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Speaker 1: humanize famous figures. Frida Kahlo's Casa Azul, and the newly
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Speaker 1: opened Casa Roja, Leon Trotsky's fortified refuge, Leonora Carrington's preserved studio,
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Speaker 1: and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's family home all offer personal artifacts
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Speaker 1: that make history feel lived in and immediate. Together, these
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Speaker 1: spaces portray Mexico City as a place where ancient ruins,
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Speaker 1: political upheaval, exile, art, and domestic memory coexist in unusually
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Speaker 1: vivid ways. We begin part two, on a tour of
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Speaker 1: Gabriel Garcia Marquez's home, led by Emilia Garcia Elizondo, Garcia
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Speaker 1: Marquez's 36-year-old granddaughter. Here now is part two. We wandered
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Speaker 1: the cozy living room, which was adorned with oil portraits
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Speaker 1: and bronze busts of Garcia Marquez and his wife, Mercedes Barsha,
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Speaker 1: by artist friends. After my grandmother died in 2020, we
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Speaker 1: didn't want to sell the family home, It was so
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Speaker 1: full of memories. It was hard for us to let go,
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Speaker 1: but we had no long-term plan, she says. They sold
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Speaker 1: Garcia Marquez's clothes and donated the money to a children's
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Speaker 1: charity in the Mexican state of Chiapas, then staged small
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Speaker 1: exhibitions before deciding to officially open. I crossed the manicured
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Speaker 1: garden to the separate study library to meet one of
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Speaker 1: Garcia Marquez's sons, 64-year-old Gonzalo Garcia Barcha, a mustachioed graphic
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Speaker 1: designer who recalled that his parents loved to entertain celebrated writers, politicians,
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Speaker 1: and movie stars in the house. I remember when Fidel
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Speaker 1: came here, he mused. Sean Penn came by with Hollywood
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Speaker 1: people wanting to do a film of The Autumn of
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Speaker 1: the Patriarch, Garcia Marquez's 1975 novel, about a declining dictator.
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Speaker 1: Garcia Barsha said that the family envisions the house as
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Speaker 1: a venue for lectures, talks, and book club meetings. There
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Speaker 1: is a very different atmosphere here than in a curated museum,
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Speaker 1: he says. This is where my parents lived for decades.
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Speaker 1: This is where they died. These are Gabo's books, his office.
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Speaker 1: It was a workplace. The casual presence of literary artifacts
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Speaker 1: was thrilling. The library has the narrow wooden table on
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Speaker 1: which Garcia Marquez wrote One Hundred Years of Solitude. The
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Speaker 1: original manuscript is in the Sumaya Museum across town, while
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Speaker 1: the study has the larger desk on which he wrote
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Speaker 1: Love in the Time of Cholera. One wall features a
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Speaker 1: photo portrait of Garcia Marquez by Richard Avedon. Other snapshots
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Speaker 1: show him in 1982 accepting his Nobel in Stockholm and
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Speaker 1: in the Company of American Presidents. Although raised on Colombia's
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Speaker 1: Caribbean coast, Garcia Marquez became, in his mature years, a
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Speaker 1: wildly popular adopted son in literature-loving Mexico City. Taxi drivers
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Speaker 1: knew his address, said Garcia Barsha. When he died, the
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Speaker 1: street was so crowded with people that friends couldn't get
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Speaker 1: in for a week. The final artistic genius I pursued
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Speaker 1: worked in a very different discipline, architecture. Luis Barragan, who
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Speaker 1: emerged in the mid-20th century as the most influential designer
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Speaker 1: in Latin America, has long been a household name in
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Speaker 1: Mexico City for his unique creations, mixing minimalism and bold
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Speaker 1: colors that evoke a technicolor version of Frank Lloyd Wright.
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Speaker 1: Although he was personally austere, even monk-like in his habits,
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Speaker 1: he is responsible for the city's passion for pink, for example,
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Speaker 1: which is now the color of choice for taxis, metro stations,
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Speaker 1: and many houses, the product of his love for the
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Speaker 1: bougainvillea flowers of his home state of Jalisco. Traveling art
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Speaker 1: aficionados now seek his work all over CDMX. Frustratingly, all
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Speaker 1: but one of his masterpieces are privately owned, with Byzantine
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Speaker 1: booking rules and eccentric hours. So it was welcome news
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Speaker 1: in 2025 when La Quadra San Cristobal, a majestic 6.7-acre
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Speaker 1: former horse ranch designed by Barragan in the mid-1960s and
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Speaker 1: located far north of the city, was opened to the public.
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Speaker 1: It had been purchased in 2024 by the Fernando Romero Foundation,
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Speaker 1: which is led by the accomplished Mexico City architect Fernando Romero.
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Speaker 1: His own masterwork is the iconic Sumaya Museum, unveiled in
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Speaker 1: 2011 as a swirl of silver tiles rising like a
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Speaker 1: meringue cake. In an hour-long taxi ride to La Cuadra,
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Speaker 1: I passed Paragon's imposing satellite towers, five concrete obelisks painted
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Speaker 1: in bold primary colors. blue, two white, yellow, and red,
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Speaker 1: soaring between 98 and 171 feet above a busy highway.
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Speaker 1: From a narrow back road, I entered the former horse ranch, which,
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Speaker 1: like all of Baragon's sites, is an enclave of serenity,
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Speaker 1: blending art and nature, and joined some 100 guests exploring
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Speaker 1: the monumental structures. The geometric pink and white walls, interspersed
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Speaker 1: with brilliant blue pools, lush green trees, and hypnotic fountains,
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Speaker 1: evoke a kaleidoscopic stonehenge. Within the so-called secret garden, Barragan
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Speaker 1: had tied the branches of saplings together so they would
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Speaker 1: grow into tunnels of vegetation. Today, they are succulent hideaways
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Speaker 1: worthy of an elven forest. Romero himself led visitors through
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Speaker 1: La Cuadra's new highlight, a museum exhibition devoted to Barragan's
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Speaker 1: work using his own words, Barragan on Barragan, accompanied by
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Speaker 1: detailed scale models of each of his creations. The most
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Speaker 1: idiosyncratic of the sites in Mexico City, Romero explained, is
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Speaker 1: also the most eccentric to visit today. The Capuchin Convent Chapel,
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Speaker 1: designed and built by the devoutly Catholic Baragon from 1955
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Speaker 1: to 1963. The chapel is still part of a functioning
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Speaker 1: nun's residence. Appointments are limited and can be booked only
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Speaker 1: by telephone. Indeed, the first three times I called, nobody
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Speaker 1: picked up. Finally, an elderly nun answered, but she said
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Speaker 1: she couldn't find the appointment register. Another nun had misplaced it.
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Speaker 1: Could I call back? Securing a slot took three more attempts.
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Speaker 1: The challenge only added to the anticipation when I finally
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Speaker 1: stood at 10.30 a.m. on a quiet street in a
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Speaker 1: far southern neighborhood called Tlalpan, ringing the bell at an
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Speaker 1: unmarked wooden portal. Eventually it creaked open, and an octogenarian
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Speaker 1: nun in a black habit peered out at me suspiciously.
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Speaker 1: You are a half-hour late, she chided, before reluctantly letting
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Speaker 1: me in. She was carrying a wicker tray, where I
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Speaker 1: was to leave my phone, no photos, and two hundred pesos,
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Speaker 1: eleven dollars, in cash. No credit-card capabilities, she told me
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Speaker 1: with a chuckle. Even by Mexico City's standards, the convent
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Speaker 1: had an otherworldly air. after introducing herself as Sister Maria
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Speaker 1: de los Dolores, the nun led me into a compact
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Speaker 1: interior courtyard, where a glassy pool reflected a canary-yellow lattice
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Speaker 1: framed by vines. Inside the silent chapel itself, a beam
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Speaker 1: of golden morning sunshine magically lit up the gilded altar,
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Speaker 1: while a minimalist cross cast its shadow on a glowing
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Speaker 1: orange wall. Bargan played a game with light, Sister Maria
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Speaker 1: de los Dolores said simply. The chapel's elegant pine decor
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Speaker 1: was unchanged from its 1963 appearance, except for a mirror
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Speaker 1: hung in the robe room. The mother superior wanted to
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Speaker 1: see how she looked when she got dressed, the sister
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Speaker 1: said with a wry laugh. Sister Maria de los Dolores,
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Speaker 1: one of only eleven elderly nuns who live in the convent,
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Speaker 1: recalled that she had met Barragan many times when he
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Speaker 1: came to services here until his death in 1988. He
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Speaker 1: was very religious and very generous, she said. We couldn't
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Speaker 1: afford a new chapel, so he paid for most of
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Speaker 1: it himself. Still, she confided, it was not a seamless process.
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Speaker 1: Construction was delayed for two years because of an artistic
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Speaker 1: disagreement between Barragan and the Mother Superior. She wanted an
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Speaker 1: arched roof, but he wouldn't change his design, according to
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Speaker 1: her story. Then, after she died, the next Mother Superior said,
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Speaker 1: Let's finish what we started as soon as we can,
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Speaker 1: and they proceeded with Barragan's plan. We ended up back
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Speaker 1: at a desk where the nuns had set up a
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Speaker 1: modest stall, selling cookies, honey— eggnog, postcards, and souvenir books,
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Speaker 1: cash only. On my way back to the city center,
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Speaker 1: I detoured to a final museum where the artistic strands
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Speaker 1: of Mexico converged, a fantastical edifice called the Anahuacalli, designed
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Speaker 1: by Rivera in the 1940s to display his private collection
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Speaker 1: of pre-Columbian art. It was a culmination of his lifelong
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Speaker 1: championing of Mexico's artistic heritage. Rivera had acquired his first
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Speaker 1: Mexican antiquity at age 10 in 1896, when he visited
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Speaker 1: a flea market with his father, and 30 years later
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Speaker 1: he had 60,000 pieces that needed a home. Both he
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Speaker 1: and Kahlo saw Ana Wakali's first stone laid in the
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Speaker 1: early 1940s, but neither lived to see it open in 1964.
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Speaker 1: Their passion for ancient art has spread in the decades
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Speaker 1: since in Mexico City and beyond. In 2021, a renovation
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Speaker 1: and expansion of Anahuacalli was completed, resulting in a renewed
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Speaker 1: burst of fascination. Today, it qualifies as one of the
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Speaker 1: world's oddest yet most engaging museums and an immersive aesthetic experience.
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Speaker 1: Looming above a grand courtyard modeled on an Aztec ball court,
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Speaker 1: its main structure is a hybrid pyramid and temple made
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Speaker 1: from dark volcanic rock. first floor represents the Aztec underworld,
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Speaker 1: as I learned after stepping through a portal from blinding
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Speaker 1: sunshine into near darkness. In cavernous sepulchral galleries, exquisite stone
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Speaker 1: statuettes are hauntingly spotlit on shelves without any labels, adding
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Speaker 1: to the sense of mystery and wonder, while Rivera's ceiling
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Speaker 1: mosaics emphasize the feathered Aztec serpent god Quetzalcoatl A carved
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Speaker 1: star case rises through trapezoidal arches to upper galleries filled
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Speaker 1: with streaming light. A wall in the largest chamber has
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Speaker 1: a giant unfinished mural by Rivera that depicts Kahlo giving
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Speaker 1: art lessons to indigenous farmers. For a moment, the seven
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Speaker 1: centuries of Mexico City's extravagant history blurred. Afterward, it was
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Speaker 1: a struggle to hail a taxi on the narrow street
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Speaker 1: outside the museum. then nudge back through the city's notorious
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Speaker 1: peak-hour traffic to the center. I gazed out at the
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Speaker 1: apparently endless 21st-century megalopolis, and I knew I had only
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Speaker 1: just scratched the surface. And with this article, did you know?
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Speaker 1: Kahlo's legacy lives on. Likenesses of Frida Kahlo and husband
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Speaker 1: Diego Rivera once graced the 500-peso note. Salma Hayek, earned
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Speaker 1: an Oscar nomination for her starring role in the 2002
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Speaker 1: film Frida. The Smithsonian's Archives of American Art holds several
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Speaker 1: photographs of Kahlo and letters she wrote to Rivera and others.
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Speaker 1: And bronze statues of Kahlo and Rivera were installed at
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Speaker 1: the Frida Kahlo Park in Mexico City in 1984. Next,
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Speaker 1: to dismantle the concept of separate but equal, Thurgood Marshall
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Speaker 1: methodically devised a winning strategy, divide and conquer. While other
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Speaker 1: activists aimed to take down Jim Crow in one fell swoop,
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Speaker 1: the future Supreme Court justice compiled a series of wins
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Speaker 1: that ultimately added up to an undeniable resolution. By Victor
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Speaker 1: Luckerson Thurgood Marshall was feeling confident, or certainly looked like
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Speaker 1: he was. At 37 years old, the attorney and head
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Speaker 1: of the National Association for for the Advancement of Colored
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Speaker 1: People Legal Defense Fund, was a rising star who had
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Speaker 1: won two of his first three cases before the U.S.
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Speaker 1: Supreme Court. Boisterous and charismatic, he blew into the tiny
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Speaker 1: town of McAllister, Oklahoma, in November 1945, to announce an
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Speaker 1: audacious new plan. He was going to get a black
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Speaker 1: student enrolled at the University of Oklahoma, the state's all-white
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Speaker 1: flagship college. This is the easiest case to beat that
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Speaker 1: ever entered the courts of Oklahoma, Marshall boasted before a
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Speaker 1: crowd of local NAACP delegates. I could win this type
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Speaker 1: of case even down in Mississippi. The NAACP had tried
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Speaker 1: and failed to take on Jim Crow segregation in education before.
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Speaker 1: All roads to justice were blocked by Plessy v. Ferguson,
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Speaker 1: the 1896 Supreme Court ruling that legally protected segregation under
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Speaker 1: the separate but equal doctrine. While the court argued that
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Speaker 1: segregated schools were a, quote, valid exercise of legislative power,
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Speaker 1: end quote, Americans of all races knew separate but equal
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Speaker 1: to be a farce. Black students were too often shunted
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Speaker 1: to poor, racially isolated schools that offered fewer opportunities than
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Speaker 1: those of their white counterparts. Marshall believed that the best
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Speaker 1: route to dismantling Jim Crow was through the courtroom. But
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Speaker 1: he also understood that an all-out attack on segregation, as
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Speaker 1: he often called it, could not be achieved with a
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Speaker 1: single judicial ruling. The cruel logic of Plessy would have
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Speaker 1: to be chipped away piece by piece, case by case.
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Speaker 1: While the Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board
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Speaker 1: of Education is widely remembered for tearing down the separate
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Speaker 1: but equal doctrine in schools, that landmark ruling couldn't have
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Speaker 1: happened without the roster of courageous students who were willing
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Speaker 1: to barrel across the color line in the decades prior.
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Speaker 1: They were led by an attorney determined to create a
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Speaker 1: more equal world at a time when courts, colleges, and
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Speaker 1: even some of his fellow black leaders deemed it impossible.
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Speaker 1: You just simply cannot have a little segregation, Marshall once remarked.
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Speaker 1: You cannot rationalize on the necessity of segregation at all.
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Speaker 1: For Marshall, the desire to destroy Jim Crow was wasn't
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Speaker 1: just a professional calling. It was personal. Lanky, personable, and
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Speaker 1: usually armed with a vulgar joke, Marshall had been known
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Speaker 1: as a class clown growing up in Baltimore. Langston Hughes,
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Speaker 1: a classmate during his undergrad years at Lincoln University, described
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Speaker 1: him as, quote, and set his sights on enrolling at
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Speaker 1: the University of Maryland's law school. But he was unable
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Speaker 1: to attend because of the color of his skin, an
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Speaker 1: injustice that would motivate much of his career. In 1930,
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Speaker 1: he begrudgingly enrolled at Howard University, which had a small,
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Speaker 1: struggling law school at the time. The decision would prove transformative.
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Speaker 1: At Howard, Marshall encountered Charles Houston, the stern new dean
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Speaker 1: of the law school and later an attorney for the NAACP.
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Speaker 1: Houston instilled a sense of purpose in his young students,
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Speaker 1: predicting that the black lawyers of Marshall's generation would become
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Speaker 1: the social engineers of a new America. After Marshall graduated
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Speaker 1: at the top of his class, an impressed Houston recruited
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Speaker 1: him to help with legal work for the NAACP. The
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Speaker 1: organization wanted to improve black schools, but was still casting
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Speaker 1: about for the best way to do so. Initially, in
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Speaker 1: the 1920s, the Civil Rights Group laid out a plan
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Speaker 1: to file a barrage of targeted lawsuits to increase funding
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Speaker 1: for black schools on a case-by-case basis. In 1931, NAACP
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Speaker 1: attorney Nathan Margold argued that the organization should challenge the
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Speaker 1: constitutionality of segregation directly by exposing the widespread inequality between
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Speaker 1: white schools and black ones. When Houston became the NAACP's
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Speaker 1: lead attorney, he made a savvy revision to Margold's strategy.
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Speaker 1: Instead of targeting elementary and high schools, he would look
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Speaker 1: for inequities in higher education. Using legal pressure, the NAACP
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Speaker 1: could force states to either build expensive, separate-but-equal professional schools
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Speaker 1: for black students or admit them into white schools. Any
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Speaker 1: black-only facilities that failed to live up to an equal
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Speaker 1: standard would only bolster the argument that African Americans were
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Speaker 1: being denied their basic rights. The early years pursuing the
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Speaker 1: strategy led to misfires. In 1938, Houston and Marshall successfully
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Speaker 1: argued before the Supreme Court that a black student named
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Speaker 1: Lloyd Gaines deserved a spot at the University of Missouri's
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Speaker 1: law school. Yet just before classes began, Gaines disappeared mysteriously,
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Speaker 1: embarrassing the NAACP. The weight of breaking the color barrier
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Speaker 1: may have simply been too much for the young man.
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Speaker 1: His last known correspondence was a letter to his mother
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Speaker 1: lamenting the pressures he faced fighting for the, quote, lasting
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Speaker 1: success for 13 million Negroes, end quote. Houston soon retired,
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Speaker 1: and Marshall became the head of the NAACP's new legal
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Speaker 1: defense fund. His team scoured the South for suitable candidates
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Speaker 1: who could apply to professional schools and who, if they
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Speaker 1: became plaintiffs, wouldn't disappear. In 1945, they found an ideal
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Speaker 1: person in Ada Lois Sipuel, a 21-year-old college graduate and
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Speaker 1: aspiring lawyer from Oklahoma. Sipuel's parents had escaped Tulsa after
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Speaker 1: the race massacre of 1921 when a white mob burned
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Speaker 1: down the black neighborhood of Greenwood. She was more than
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Speaker 1: familiar with racial hatred, and she seized the opportunity when
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Speaker 1: the NAACP recruited her to challenge discrimination at the University
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Speaker 1: of Oklahoma. The law was wrong, she said later of
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Speaker 1: her reasoning. The whole system was unfair. In January 1946,
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Speaker 1: Sipuel applied to the University of Oklahoma's law school and
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Speaker 1: was denied because of her race. Marshall and the NAACP
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Speaker 1: quickly filed suit. and within two years the case made
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Speaker 1: its way to the Supreme Court. Although in earlier education
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Speaker 1: cases the NAACP had mostly stuck to arguing that black
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Speaker 1: students deserved equal facilities, this time Marshall attacked Plessy directly.
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Speaker 1: He declared that the separate but equal doctrine was without
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Speaker 1: legal foundation. The Supreme Court ruled in Sipuel's favor, but
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Speaker 1: the decision pointedly sidestepped the question of of whether separate
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Speaker 1: but equal was constitutional. The court would allow only that
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Speaker 1: Sipuel deserved a law school education, however the University of
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Speaker 1: Oklahoma might see fit to create it. Seizing on this
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Speaker 1: vague directive, state officials hastily established a sham black law
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Speaker 1: school located in a few spare rooms in the state capitol. Sipuel, insulted,
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Speaker 1: refused to enroll. Other high-profile cases that Marshall pursued at
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Speaker 1: the same time hit similar roadblocks. The same month of
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Speaker 1: the Sipuel decision, a professor named George McLaurin applied to
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Speaker 1: attend the University of Oklahoma's graduate school and was denied.
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Speaker 1: Following a lawsuit, he was admitted with reluctance, but the
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Speaker 1: school assigned him a desk in a separate alcove from
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Speaker 1: white students and banned him from eating lunch with his classmates.
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Speaker 1: In Texas, a 33-year-old mailman named Heeman Sweatt filed suit
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Speaker 1: to enroll at the University of Texas Law School. The
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Speaker 1: state's attorney general declared that Sweatt would never, quote, darken
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Speaker 1: the doors, end quote, of the university, and college officials
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Speaker 1: set him up in a separate charade law school similar
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Speaker 1: to Sipuel's at Oklahoma. Marshall realized that these colleges would
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Speaker 1: not budge from separate but equal laws. even if it
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Speaker 1: meant spending new money on black facilities. He would have
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Speaker 1: to push his argument further. So, in April of 1950,
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Speaker 1: he and his NAACP colleagues argued a pair of appeals
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Speaker 1: in the Sweatt and McLaurin cases before the Supreme Court.
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Speaker 1: They emphasized that forced segregation was a violation of the
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Speaker 1: Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, regardless of the
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Speaker 1: quality of segregated facilities being provided to black students. The
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Speaker 1: very fact of segregation establishes a feeling of humiliation and
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Speaker 1: deprivation to the group considered to be inferior, Marshall's team
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Speaker 1: argued in their legal brief, or, as the lawyer himself said,
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Speaker 1: in simpler terms during the hearing, they can build an
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Speaker 1: exact duplicate of the law school, but if it is segregated,
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Speaker 1: it is unequal. An onlooker said it was one of
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Speaker 1: Marshall's most persuasive presentations before the court. On June 5,
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Speaker 1: the Supreme Court offered its decision. The segregation policies that
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Speaker 1: had kept McLaurin and Sweatt separate from their white classmates
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Speaker 1: would have to be abolished. But the court again sidestepped
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Speaker 1: the thrust of the NAACP's argument that Plessy v. Ferguson
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Speaker 1: and the separate-but-equal doctrine itself was unconstitutional. Broader issues have
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Speaker 1: been urged for our consideration, Chief Justice Fred Vinson wrote
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Speaker 1: in his opinion. but we adhere to the principle of
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Speaker 1: deciding constitutional questions only in the context of the particular
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Speaker 1: case before the court. The legal victories were widely celebrated
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Speaker 1: in the black press and at NAACP headquarters. There was
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Speaker 1: lots of scotch and bourbon, one attorney recalled, but there
24:42
Speaker 1: was also worry from some black leaders about the narrow
24:45
Speaker 1: scope of the ruling. I know you would have preferred
24:49
Speaker 1: a clear-cut overruling, Of Plessy v. Ferguson, a friend of
24:52
Speaker 1: Marshall's wrote to him consolingly in a private letter. But
24:57
Speaker 1: Marshall didn't think the window of opportunity was closing. Far
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Speaker 1: from it. A careful reading of the opinions will show
25:06
Speaker 1: that for all intents and purposes, Plessy v. Ferguson has
25:10
Speaker 1: been gutted, he responded. Whatever way you look at it,
25:14
Speaker 1: the end is in sight. Marshall was right. in 1951,
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Speaker 1: around eight months after the Sweatt and McLaurin rulings, a
25:23
Speaker 1: Kansas welder named Oliver Brown filed a class-action lawsuit against
25:29
Speaker 1: the Topeka School Board on behalf of his third-grade daughter, Linda,
25:33
Speaker 1: who had been denied access to a nearby white elementary school.
25:39
Speaker 1: By the time Brown v. Board of Education made its
25:42
Speaker 1: way to the Supreme Court in 1952, Marshall and had
25:46
Speaker 1: sharpened the arguments he'd first introduced in previous higher education cases,
25:52
Speaker 1: particularly around the negative psychological effects of segregation on students.
25:59
Speaker 1: When Chief Justice Earl Warren issued his landmark 1954 opinion,
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Speaker 1: he cited several of Marshall's previous cases as relevant precedent— Gaines, Sipuel, Sweatt,
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Speaker 1: and McLaurin— The combined weight of those cases, of the
26:18
Speaker 1: lost opportunity these black students had suffered, was finally enough
26:23
Speaker 1: to force the court to reverse its historic mistake. In
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Speaker 1: the field of public education, the doctrine of separate but
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Speaker 1: equal has no place, Warren's opinion read. The Brown v.
26:38
Speaker 1: Board decision was seismic, but it wasn't sudden. The courts
26:43
Speaker 1: slowly ceded ground in each successive decision. And the courageous
26:48
Speaker 1: students never let up, throwing a wrench into the dehumanizing
26:52
Speaker 1: machinery of Jim Crow every chance they got. Progress is
26:57
Speaker 1: often slow and incremental, until it happens all at once.
27:04
Speaker 1: And with this article, Need to Know, The Life of
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Speaker 1: Thurgood Marshall. Born Thorogood Marshall on June 2, 1908, in Baltimore,
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Speaker 1: the future jurist was known as a cut-up at Frederick
27:20
Speaker 1: Douglass High School. As a punishment for hijinks, a teacher
27:25
Speaker 1: made him sit in a basement room and memorize portions
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Speaker 1: of the U.S. Constitution. To pay his entry fees for
27:33
Speaker 1: law school at Howard University, Marshall's mother pawned her engagement
27:38
Speaker 1: and wedding rings. And finally, during his tenure as a
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Speaker 1: Supreme Court Justice, Marshall retained a sense of mischief and
27:47
Speaker 1: once let a family of tourists believe he was the
27:51
Speaker 1: elevator operator. This concludes readings from the Smithsonian Magazine for today.
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Speaker 1: Your reader has been Rebecca Shore. Thank you for listening
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Speaker 1: and have a great day.