A former Mississippi State administrator will discuss his forthcoming biography of America's first African-American Supreme Court justice during a Monday [April 7] public program at the university.
"Thurgood Marshall: Always the Outsider, Always Defiant" is the title both of Howard Ball's soon-to-be published book and his 1:30 p.m. address in the Colvard Union small auditorium.
The program is another in the John C. Stennis Lecture Series sponsored by the political science department, which Ball headed from 1976 to 1982.
Ball is a University Scholar at the University of Vermont. After five years as dean of arts and sciences at Vermont, he returned in 1995 to full-time teaching and research on the American judicial system, particularly the Supreme Court.
Thurgood Marshall (l908-93) made a name at the Supreme Court even before he was appointed by President Lyndon Johnson to the nation's highest bench in 1967. An attorney and civil rights leader, he successfully argued the landmark 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education case that found unconstitutional all laws enforcing segregated public education.
Among Ball's earlier books are "The Vision and the Dream of Justice Hugo L. Black," "No Pledge of Privacy: The Watergate Tapes Litigation" and "Compromised Compliance: Implementation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act."
While political science department head, Ball helped establish and get accredited a master's degree program in public administration. During his campus tenure, the department also produced a number of "firsts," including the Harry S. Truman Scholar, Pre-Law Society Distinguished Jurist Award and Mississippi Model Security Council.
Ball holds degrees from Hunter College-City College of New York and Rutgers University.
For more information on his address on Thurgood Marshall, telephone (601) 325-2711.