Secretary-General, Attending College Fund Ceremony, Hails Thurgood Marshall

 

as ‘Kindred Spirit’, Champion of Values Dear to United Nations

 

Following are UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s remarks at the Thurgood Marshall College Fund dinner, in New York yesterday, 24 October:

Congratulations to tonight’s honourees.  What a privilege for me to be among them.

Today we celebrate the sixty-sixth anniversary of the founding of the United Nations and its contribution to world peace, security, development and human rights.  With both pride and humility, on this UN Day, I accept this “Humanitarian of the Year” award in the name of the United Nations and its staff.

Each day, every day, they work to save lives and help people rise from poverty, to rebuild from conflict, to recover from natural disaster.  Yet let me also say:  being a humanitarian, in its fullest sense, goes beyond this mission alone.

If you are a true humanitarian, you look at the world in a certain way — you see yourself as part of something larger than yourself.  You try to make a difference in the lives of others; even, perhaps, to change the world.

Thurgood Marshall was a true humanitarian.

We all know the legend of this great man:  how he transformed the law — and the country — with his pioneering work on the Supreme Court.  How he fought for human rights and social equity.  How he contributed so much to Howard University and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

As a champion of equal rights at home, he also spoke to the deepest yearnings of all the world’s people.  As a champion of the rule of law — the same laws, for all people — he helped shape the international judicial landscape.  He spoke for values and norms of behaviour that resonate today in every corner of the globe.

In other words, he embodied the values that we at the United Nations hold most dear.  He was a kindred spirit.

[Thurgood] Marshall and the United Nations crossed paths many times.  In 1954, he sat next to our own champion of racial equality, Ralph Bunche, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, when the NAACP celebrated the Supreme Court decision declaring racially segregated education to be unconstitutional.  In 1965, at the request of President Lyndon Johnson, Marshall led the United States delegation at a UN conference on crime.

And when the United Nations supported independence movements across Africa and rallied against apartheid in South Africa, we were standing alongside men and women who drew inspiration from Marshall himself.

Kenya turned to Marshall for help in drafting the country’s new Constitution and bill of rights.  A scholar later noted that “many passages were identical to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights”, one of the UN’s founding documents.

Most recently, the soundtrack for the Arab Spring included “We Shall Overcome”.   Marshall was widely known as “Mr. Civil Rights”.  Today, his brand of non-violent action, a hallmark of the American civil rights movement, has made a big comeback across the geopolitical map.

His fame was global — even to me as a young boy in faraway Korea.  Marshall himself came to Korea in 1951.  His investigation of the treatment of African-American G.I.’s there helped advance efforts to integrate the United States Army.

Perhaps some of your parents or grandparents served there in Korea, to defend the freedom and security of my homeland, the Republic of Korea.  I thank you for your support.  Perhaps they told you that the fighting had taken a terrible turn — until units of extremely disciplined and courageous African-American soldiers helped turn the tide.

We Koreans are well aware of what many thousands of African-Americans did to help liberate our country.  Many paid with their lives.  As African-American soldiers liberated Korea, they gained more freedom for themselves.  In that war, blacks and whites fought together in common cause.  And that, in turn, shaped the similar struggle back home.

Today, the United Nations fights prejudice and discrimination everywhere.  In all our work, wherever it might be, we champion the rights of men, women and children to live in peace, dignity and justice — equality of opportunity, the same laws for all.

In a few days, at the end of this month, we will welcome the world’s 7 billionth child into our human family.  As we see it, every man, woman and child has the right to grow up in peace, with enough to eat, with the health care, education and freedoms they need to realize their full potential.

The anger we see on our streets today — on Main Street, as well as Wall Street — grows from a loss of hope, a lack of faith in Governments to do the right thing for their people.

Thurgood Marshall would know this.  He would know what to do; how to show leadership.  He would be proud of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund.  And I am confident that he would be proud of the United Nations as well.

I look forward to working with you to deepen his great legacy — and your great work.

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For information media • not an official record