Margaret H. Marshall

Margaret H. Marshall ’76 has always been an advocate for justice at heart. But she never thought she would be a lawyer. 

Marshall grew up in South Africa during the apartheid era, a regime marked by extreme oppression of the black majority by the white minority, with arrests, banishment orders, imprisonment without trial, and assassinations by the apartheid government targeting its political opponents. As a student in the mid-1960s, she became deeply involved in activities against apartheid. The most internationally known episode from this period was Nelson Mandela’s arrest in 1962 and subsequent sentence to life in prison. Four years later, as Vice President of the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS), Marshall accompanied Robert F. Kennedy on his 1966 visit to South Africa. She was with him in Cape Town when he delivered his now world-famous remarks, which deeply influenced her: “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

The political opposition to injustice with which Marshall became familiar was grassroots organizing, demonstrating in the streets, boycotts and similar actions. “In South Africa, law was an instrument of oppression,” she said. “The law — with compliant judges to enforce the apartheid laws — was used over and over again to dehumanize the majority, Black South Africans, whether forcibly moving millions from their homes to make way for Whites, or forcing every Black person to carry an identity document with them at all times, on pain of immediate arrest. Not surprisingly, I developed a deep suspicion for law and its role in society.” 

Marshall surmises that her race — coming from a white, non-political family — helped shield her from the worst from the South African police, but being a white woman made a bigger difference. “My gender protected me more — at least at that moment in South Africa’s history,” she said. “It kept me from banishment and kept me out of prison. The warrants issued for my arrest were not executed as they were against my white male colleagues and all my black colleagues.” Marshall pressed on, becoming the national President of NUSAS. Faced with the overwhelming military, financial, and political power of the apartheid government, Marshall said, “I had no confidence that anything I was doing would make a difference, but I had to try.”