Documentary on Supreme Court justice to be shown Feb. 11

 A documentary by film producer Mick Caouette on Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall will be held Wednesday, Feb. 11, at room 102, Saint John’s University Art Center.

The event begins with a reception at 6:30 p.m., with the screening of Caouette’s film, “Mr. Civil Rights: Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP,” at 7 p.m. A panel discussion follows the screening featuring Caouette; Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Alan Page; Denise Fale, director of the St. Cloud Area National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); and Matt Lindstrom, professor of political science and director of the Eugene J. McCarthy Center for Public Policy and Civic Engagement.

The event is free and open to the public, and is being held in association with Black History Month.

Marshall was the first African-American to serve as an associate justice on the Supreme Court. But his service to the country started long before President Lyndon Johnson nominated him to the Court in 1967.

Following his graduation from the Howard University School of Law in 1933, Marshall started a law practice in his hometown of Baltimore. The next year, he began a 25-year association with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and argued many civil rights cases before the Supreme Court. He won 29 of the 32 cases he argued before the Supreme Court.

His most famous case as a lawyer was Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, in which the Supreme Court ruled that “separate but equal” public education was not applicable because it could never be truly equal.

President John Kennedy appointed Marshall to the U.S. Court of Appeals in the Second Circuit in 1961. He remained with that court until 1965, when Johnson appointed him solicitor general. In that position, he won 14 of the 19 cases he tried for the government.

Marshall was the 96th person to hold a seat on the Supreme Court, and was an advocate for individual rights, especially the rights of criminal suspects against the government. He retired from the Supreme Court in 1991.

Page has been an associate justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court since 1992, when he became the first African-American to serve on the court. He has been reelected three times, most recently in 2010.

Earlier in his career, Page was a standout defensive tackle for the Minnesota Vikings (1967-78) and Chicago Bears (1978-81). Page was one of 11 players to participate in all four Super Bowls the Vikings’ played in. In 1971, he was named the NFL’s Most Valuable Player, becoming the first defensive player to be named MVP.

Caouette’s film made its debut on PBS in October, 2014. Caouette, a graduate of Hamline University in St. Paul, has done previous documentaries on Hubert Humphrey and Eugene McCarthy, a graduate of SJU.

“It has become my mission to bring out from the shadows of history the stories of those heroes of quiet courage, who have permanently changed American life,” Caouette said on his website.

The event is sponsored by the Saint John’s Chair in Critical Thinking; International and Intercultural Student Services at CSB and SJU; and the Eugene J. McCarthy Center for Public Policy and Civic Engagement.