Thurgood Marshall, the NAACP, and a Civil Rights Milestone in Rockville

Civil rights icon Thurgood Marshall delivered an early blow to school segregation right here in Montgomery County—gaining equal pay for the county’s African American teachers in 1936.

In a very special setting--the same courtroom where Thurgood Marshall made the case for Montgomery County's Black school teachers to be paid the same as their white colleagues--Peerless Rockville volunteer historian Ralph Buglass will elaborate on the historical importance of the Gibbs case as the first such one in the nation and an early step toward the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision that overturned school segregation. The talk will also look at how the case served as a “shot in the arm” for organizing a countywide chapter of the NAACP, the civil rights organization Marshall, later the first African-American Supreme Court justice, was representing. The courtroom, recently restored, looks identical to when Marshall appeared there in 1937. Come hear this compelling story and see this gem of a location!

This little-known legal case is often seen as the first step in Marshall’s successful drive to have separate schools for white and black children declared unconstitutional, as the Supreme Court did 17 years later in a landmark decision. This illustrated talk details this remarkable local story and its national significance. Spoiler alert: the victory came at a tremendous cost to William Gibbs, the teacher at the center of this case.This talk will be given in the courtroom in which Marshall appeared along with the equally legendary Charles Hamilton Houston, the NAACP's chief counsel.

Peerless Rockville Historic Preservation Ltd. is supported in part by a grant from the City of Rockville and funding from the Montgomery County Government and the Arts & Humanities Council of Montgomery County.

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