Burke Marshall Dies At 80, Civil Rights Legal Warrior

Burke Marshall, 80, an assistant attorney general in the administrations of President John F. Kennedy and President Lyndon B. Johnson and recipient of the Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights, died May 2 at his home on Castle Meadow Road in Newtown, of myelodysplasia, a bone marrow disorder.

Mr Marshall, a resident of Newtown for 30 years, was the husband of Violet (Person) Marshall.

He was born in Plainfield, N.J., on October 1, 1922, son of the late Henry and Dorothy (Burke) Marshall. Following his graduation from Yale University in 1943, he joined the US Army. He served as a lieutenant in the Signal Corps. Following the war, he served two years in Japan as a linguist. He graduated from Yale Law School in 1951, and joined the Washington law firm of Covington & Burling.

Burke Marshall was a key figure in the government’s efforts to desegregate the South. Once called a “founding father of a new America,” Mr Marshall headed the US Justice Department’s civil rights division.

In 1999 Mr Marshall and his family traveled to Washington, D.C., for a special ceremony at the White House during which he accepted the Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights from President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Mr Marshall, one of five recipients of the award, served as assistant attorney general during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations in the 1960s, and played a central role in the civil rights struggle and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1963 and Voting Rights Act of 1968.

As the award pointed out, in the following years Mr Marshall “inspired new generations to pursue public service,” and was honored “for his essential contribution to ending segregation and transforming our nation.”

Following the ceremony, President Clinton spent a great deal of time talking about Mr Marshall, who often served as a bridge between the government and the activists working on behalf of civil rights. The President said whenever civil rights leaders, such as Martin Luther King, Jr, and John Lewis, needed to call someone in the administration, they would always call Mr Marshall.

“He helped to shape the new America,” President Clinton said. “I will never forget the first time I saw him — this man of slight stature and such a modest demeanor and how he could almost shake with his passion for justice. We are all in his debt.”

Mr Marshall had known President and Mrs Clinton for many years, having had both of them in one of his law classes at Yale Law School. He was also very close with the Kennedys, especially Robert Kennedy, who, as attorney general, played an active role in the civil rights movement during the tumultuous 1960s. Mr Marshall also helped enforce the US Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v Board of Education, the landmark case that desegregated schools, and played key roles in the 1961 government ban on segregation in interstate travel and the desegregation of the University of Mississippi in 1962.

The Justice Department filed far more lawsuits in support of civil rights under Mr Marshall’s tenure than it did in the Eisenhower administration. But he was known as a superb negotiator, working with figures as diverse as the Rev King and Alabama Gov George C. Wallace.

Mr Marshall served as the Kennedy family attorney for some time and was head of the Kennedy Archive in Boston.

In 1999, Mr Marshall told The Bee, “That was a tremendously exciting time to work for the federal government. No one was better to work for than John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. I was very fortunate in my bosses.”

He said the passage of the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act “destroyed a system of subjugation of the black people in this country.”

Speaking in 1999, however, Mr Marshall acknowledged that difficulties still existed, but that the actions of the 1960s assured all Americans of certain liberties that they had not enjoyed previously.

Leaders of the civil rights movement were on a first-name basis with Mr Marshall, said US Rep John Lewis of Georgia, a leader in the movement. Mr Marshall may have helped avert a more vast Southern racial clash, Rep Lewis said.

“In times of great struggle and conflict in the South,” he said, “during the freedom rides of 1961, when young people were being beaten by angry mobs in Montgomery and when fire hoses and dogs were being turned on people in Birmingham, people always said, ‘Call Burke.’”

During an interview in 1999, Rep Lewis said that Mr Marshall “probably helped save the lives of many Americans. When we marched… when we sat in… and when we rode in buses across the South speaking out for justice and equality, Burke Marshall spoke out for us in Washington.”

When John F. Kennedy became President in 1961, Mr Marshall had been an antitrust lawyer for a private firm for nearly ten years. But Deputy Attorney General Byron White wanted Mr Marshall in the Kennedy Justice Department, to head the civil rights division. After one meeting with Robert Kennedy, known now as the “silent interview,” Mr Marshall was hired.

Following his service in the Justice Department, he turned down a deanship of Yale Law School, and joined IBM as general counsel in 1965.

In 1970 he became deputy dean and professor at Yale Law School. At his retirement from Yale Law School, he was named professor emeritus.

“It is hard for me to accept Burke’s death,” said Yale Law School Dean Anthony T. Kronman. “His goodness was so large that I have believed and fully wished he would live forever. Burke’s generosity brought out the best in others. His love of justice helped change a nation.”

Mr Marshall is survived, besides his wife, by three daughters, Josephine H. Phillips of Plymouth, England, Catherine Cox Marshall, and Jane Montgomery Marshall, both of Brooklyn, N.Y.; one sister, Grace Hart of Washington, D.C.; and four grandchildren.

A memorial service for Mr Marshall will be held at a later date.

Arrangements are by the Honan Funeral Home, 58 Main Street, Newtown.

Contributions in his memory may be made to Bethel Visiting Nurse Association, 1 School Street, Bethel, CT 06801.

(AP reports were used in this story.)