The 50th Law - 50 Cent [77]
Upon graduation from Howard in 1933, he faced a crucial decision for his future. He had been offered a scholarship at Harvard University to study for an advanced law degree. This represented an incredible opportunity. He could carve out for himself a nice position within the academic world and promote his ideas in various journals. It was also the middle of the Depression, and jobs for black people were few and far between; a degree from Harvard would ensure him a prosperous future. But something impelled Marshall in the opposite direction; he decided instead to set up a private practice in Baltimore and learn from the ground up how the justice system worked. At first it seemed a foolish decision—he had little work and his debts were mounting. The few cases he had, he lost and he could not figure out why. The justice system seemed to have its own rules and codes to which he had no access.
Marshall decided to employ a unique strategy to overcome this. First, he made sure that his legal briefs were masterpieces of research and detail, without any errors or erasures. He made a point of always dressing in the most professional manner and acting with the utmost courtesy, without appearing to bow and scrape. In other words, he gave no one the slightest pretext for judging against him. In this way, he defused suspicion, began to win a few cases, and gained entrée to the world of white lawyers. Now he studied that world closely. He saw the importance of certain connections and friendships, power networks he had not known about before. He recognized that certain judges required certain treatment. He learned to talk the language and fit in socially as best he could. He found out that in most cases, it was best to argue on points of narrow procedure rather than on grand concepts.
Knowing how to maneuver within these rules and conventions, he began to win more and more cases. In 1935 he took on the University of Maryland on behalf of a black student who had been denied admission to its law school, and won. From then on, he used his knowledge to take on all forms of segregation in the education system, culminating in 1954 with his greatest triumph of all, arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court the case known as Brown v. Board of Education. The court’s decision in his favor effectively ended any basis for educational segregation in the United States. What Marshall (who would later become the first African American appointed to the Supreme Court) had learned by immersing himself in the white-controlled justice system of his time is that the social process is just as important as the legal or technical one. This was not something taught in law school and yet learning it was the key to his ability to function within the system and advance the cause for which he was fighting.
Understand: when you enter a group as part of a job or a career, there are all kinds of rules that govern behavior—values of good and bad, power networks that must be respected, patterns to be followed for successful action. If you do not patiently observe and learn them well, you will make all kinds of mistakes without knowing why or how. Think of social and political skills as a craft that you must master as well as any other. In the initial phase of your apprenticeship you must do as Marshall did and mute your colors. Your goal here is not to impress people with your brilliance but to learn these conventions from the inside. Watch for telling mistakes that