MARSHALL, LOUIS

born Dec. 14, 1856, Syracuse, N.Y., U.S. died Sept. 11, 1929, Zrich, Switz. lawyer and leader of the American Jewish community who worked to secure religious, political, and cultural freedom for all minority groups. Marshall attended Columbia Law School (187677) and was admitted to the New York bar (1878). Marshall successfully argued cases in which the U.S. Supreme Court declared unconstitutional state statutes forbidding private and parochial elementary and secondary schools (Pierce v. Society of Sisters of the Holy Name, 1925) and excluding black voters from primary elections (Nixon v. Herndon, 1927). At the Paris Peace Conference after World War I (1919), Marshall advocated treaty provisions that were intended to protect minority rights and were accepted by Romania, Poland, and other eastern European nations. His opposition hastened the discontinuance of Henry Ford's anti-Semitic newspaper, the Dearborn (Michigan) Independent.