BEST LAWYERS 2011

Timeline of Marshall's life

1930 - Thurgood graduates with honors from Lincoln University, PA (cum laude).

1934 - Thurgood receives law degree from Howard University (magna cum laude); begins private practice in Baltimore, Maryland.

1934 - Begins to work for Baltimore branch of NAACP.

1935 - Worked with Charles Houston, wins first major civil rights case, Murray v. Pearson.

1936 - Becomes assistant special counsel for NAACP in New York.

1940 - Wins Chambers v. Florida, the first of twenty-nine Supreme Court victories.

1943 - Won case for integration of schools in Hillburn, New York.

1944 - Successfully argues Smith v. Allwright, overthrowing the South's "white primary".

1946 -Thurgood Marshall received a medal from the NAACP.

1948 - Wins Shelley v. Kraemer, in which Supreme Court strikes down legality of racially restrictive covenants.

1950 - Wins Supreme Court victories in two graduate-school integration cases, Sweatt v. Painter and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents.

1951 - Visits South Korea and Japan to investigate charges of racism in U.S. armed forces. He reported that the general practice was one of "rigid segregation."

1954 - Wins Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, landmark case that demolishes legal basis for segregation in America.

1956 - Wins Browder v. Gayle, ending the practice of segregation on buses and ending the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

1961 - Defends civil rights demonstrators, winning Supreme Court victory in Garner v. Louisiana; nominated to Second Circuit Court of Appeals by President J.F. Kennedy.

1961 - Appointed circuit judge, makes 112 rulings, none of them reversed on certiorari by Supreme Court (1961-1965).

1965 - Appointed United States Solicitor General by President Lyndon B. Johnson; wins 14 of the 19 cases he argues for the government (1965-1967).

1967 - Becomes first African American elevated to U.S. Supreme Court (1967-1991).

1991 - Retires from the Supreme Court.

1992 - Receives the Liberty Medal recognizing Marshall's long history of protecting individual rights under the Constitution.

1993 - Dies at age 84 in Bethesda, Maryland, near Washington, D.C.

Pink Box: Inside Japan's Sex Clubs by Joan Sinclair

Pink Box is an intriquing expose into fuzoku (commercial sex) in Japan. James Farrer states in the introduction "fuzoku is both startling and paradoxical..and difficult to explain".

.."in a world where the customer (usually male) is king but they are expected to follow strict rules within the whole enterprise of sexual entertainment."

and they have sexual entertainment galore like you've never heard of or seen of:

hostess clubs, host clubs (for women), nude theaters, touch pubs and pink salons, soaplands, peeping rooms, fashion health, hotel health, image clubs, happening bars and couples' cafes...

The author is Joan Sinclair (an American lawyer and photographer) who worked as an english teacher in Japan but after coming back to the US she grew more curious about Japan's second largest industry (after automobiles) and wanted to go back to document the underground sex industry. What is amazing is that over time and through connections she was able to gain access to the sex clubs and take pictures. She states "I tried to connect with the women, not as objects of a photographic study, but on a human level. All I ask is that viewers not assume that this profession is inherently degrading. It's more complicated than that. These women are not on drugs. They have made conscious choices; They have their own dignity...."

She sums up her experience in her photographer's notes that "The clubs are a reflection of modern Japan, a literate society, where the rules are written out, prices are not negotiable, and fantasies are predetermined, prescripted, and prepaid."