Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall chose not to
attend the festivities for 200 year anniversary commemoration of the U. S. Constitution
in 1987, primarily because he believes that the Constitution--and its founding
fathers--deliberately did not include full rights for black slaves and women. Political
compromises affected the wording of the document, which, according to Marshall, did not
live up to the credo that
"all men are created equal, that they are endowed
by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and
the pursuit of
Happiness."
Marshall claims
that the compromises made in the writing of the Constitutution extended the importation
of slaves in the Southern states for another 20
years.
The
men who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 could not have envisioned these changes. They
could not have imagined, nor would they have accepted, that the document they were
drafting would one day be construed by a Supreme Court to which had been appointed a
woman and the descendent of an African slave. "We the People" no longer enslave, but the
credit does not belong to the framers. It belongs to those who refused to acquiesce in
outdated notions of "liberty," "justice," and "equality," and who strived to better
them.
So, Marshall chose not
to celebrate the bicentennial "with flag-waving fervor." Instead, he celebrated it as "a
living document," preferring to honor the Bill of Righs "and the other amendments
protecting individual freedoms and human rights."
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