Did John Marshall have any involvement regarding racial issues?

At that time, courts repeatedly hinted that the days of the tribal government had passed. In an era supposedly tainted by greater racism, Chief Justice John Marshall recognized that the Tribal governments and the right of self-rule could not be taken away. Even though not mentioned in the Constitution, the Tribal government a true government that needed no mention in that document, since it predated the United States.

In the court case Worcester v. Georgia, the U.S. Supreme Court held in 1832 that the Cherokee Indians constituted a nation holding distinct sovereign powers. Although the decision became the foundation of the principle of tribal sovereignty in the twentieth century, it did not protect the Cherokees from being removed from their ancestral homeland in the Southeast.

Marshall's decisions did not ease tensions but it was a step forward in helping Native American tribes.

You can get some information about Marshall's involvement with racial issues by looking up his activities with the American Colonization Society, which promoted the idea of transporting black Americans to Africa. (Some historians see the ACS as an anti-slavery group; some see it more as a racist organization that wanted to get free blacks out of the United States.)

This article has a lot of information about slavery cases that came before the Supreme Court during Marshall's years as Chief Justice:

http://www.law.umaryland.edu/academics/journals/md...