Marshall, Louis

(1856–1929)

   US lawyer and communal leader. Born into a German-Jewish family, Marshall moved from Syracuse, NY to New York City, where he became a leading constitutional and civil rights lawyer. He appeared in a number of celebrated cases affecting negroes and other minority groups. Marshall was an able and energetic Jewish communal leader, and held various important offices. He was president of the American Jewish Committee, president of the Temple Emanu-El Reform Congregation and chairman of the board of the Jewish Theological Seminary.

   In 1911 he successfully led the fight to abrogate an American-Russian friendship treaty dating back to 1832, because of Russian discrimination against the passports of American Jews. At the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, he was chairman of the Committee of Jewish Delegations that pressed for minority guarantees for the Jewish communities in the new successor states in Europe. In the 20S, he was involved in organizing pressure on Henry Ford to retract the series of anti-Semitic articles published in Ford’s paper, the Dearborn Independent.

   Though not a Zionist, Marshall supported the BALFOUR Declaration. After the war, he collaborated with Dr WEIZMANN on the formation of the Jewish Agency called for in the Palestine mandate. It was to be made up partly of Zionists and partly non-Zionists and came into existence at a meeting in Geneva in 1929. As the leading non-Zionist, Marshall was nominated as the chairman of the Agency, but died suddenly at one of its sessions.