Background
Marshall was born in Syracuse. New York, the son of German-Jewish immigrants.
Marshall was born in Syracuse. New York, the son of German-Jewish immigrants.
He graduated from Columbia University Law School in 1877
In 1894 he became a partner in the law firm of Guggenheimer, Untermeyer and Marshall, where he remained until his death.
After the turn of the century, Marshall was the spokesman of the American-born German-Jewish elite in New York. He served as a director of the Educational Alliance, the largest and most influential community center on the Lower East Side, and as chairman of the commission appointed by New York City Mayor Seth Low in 1902, whose work led to better housing for Jews and less harassment by city officials.
He established the Yiddisher Veit newspaper that same year and was one of the founders of the American Jewish Committee in 1906. He served as chairman of the board of directors of the Jewish Theological Seminary, and as president of the influential New York Reform Temple Emanu-El. He was a founderof the Jewish Welfare Board in 1917, a director of Dropsie College in Philadelphia, and held numerous other important community positions.
Marshall was involved in various legal battles on behalf of the Jewish community. In 1911 Marshall led the successful fight to abrogate the American- Russian Commercial Treaty of 1852 because of the continuing Russian discrimination against American Jews while residents in Russia.
In 1915 he unsuccessfully appealed before the Supreme Court the conviction of Leo Frank on a murder charge motivated by anti-Semitism; Frank was later lynched in Georgia. His intervention in 1922 helped prevent Harvard University from imposing a quota on Jewish students. The following year Marshall reached the peak of his leadership when he became president of the American Jewish Committee, a post that he held until his death in 1929. In that position Marshall helped found and served as president of the American Jewish Relief Committee in 1914.
He guided the policies of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, established that same year to relieve the suffering of Jews in the w-ar zones. He reluctantly joined the democratic American Jewish Congress as a member of the Jewish delegation to the peace conference in 1919, where he successfully advocated provisions to protect the civil and political rights of Jews and other minorities in eastern Europe.
The campaign led by Marshall and the American Jewish Committee led to the end of Henry Ford’s anti-Semitic newspaper, the Dearborn Independent. and Ford’s formal apology to the Jews in 1927.
In 1923 Chaim Weizmann, president of the World Zionist Organization, began negotiating with Marshall to include non-Zionists in an expanded Jewish Agency that would represent World Jewry vis-a-vis mandatory Britain in matters concerning a Jewish national home in Palestine. In August 1929 the Sixteenth Zionist Congress, meeting in Zurich, finally approved the incorporation of the non-Zionists and Marshall was elected chairman of the executive of the new Jewish Agency Council.
Marshall’s death, a few months later, was probably a key factor in the failure of the non-Zionists to play an active role in the rebuilding of the homeland in Palestine until many years later.
He was active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and in 1920 defended a group of Socialists who were denied their seats in the New York State Legislature. He mediated in labor disputes, such as the 1910 International Ladies Garment Workers Union cloak-makers’ strike, and fought against restrictions on immigrants, as for example, the 1907 attempt to impose a literacy test.
Member Constitutional convs., New York, 1890, 1894, 1915. Member of commission appointed by Mayor Low, 1902, to investigate East Side conditions. Member New York District Board, 1917-1919.
President Comite des Delegations Juives auprès de la Conference de la Paix, whose efforts resulted in the treaties with Poland, Rumania, Jugo-Slavia, CzechoSlovakia and other countries, which guarantee equal rights to all racial, religious and linguistic minorities. Trustee Syracuse University, from 1910, to which has presented law library.
