American Jewish Committee

Born in Syracuse, New York, to immigrants from Germany, Louis Marshall attended Columbia Law School after clerking in a lawyer’s office. In 1878, he was admitted to the New York State Bar Association, beginning his acclaimed practice as a constitutional and civil rights attorney. In 1905, Marshall was appointed chair of the board for the Jewish Theological Seminary, and he served on the board of Congregation Emanu-El as well. He helped form the American Jewish Committee (AJC) in 1906 along with Jacob Schiff and Cyrus Adler, becoming president of the organization from 1912 until his death. Marshall worked on the legal defense of Leo Frank in 1914, and for a time he served as director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1919, representing both the AJC and the newly formed American Jewish Congress, Marshall attended the Paris Peace Conference to seek international guarantees of the rights of Jews in Poland, Lithuania, and other newly created states in Eastern Europe. Concern for the plight of East European Jews also pushed Marshall toward rapprochement with Zionism in the 1920s.