elected Albert C. Ritchie, a Democrat, governor. He was reelected four times, serving from 1919 to 1934. Ritchie was handsome, aristocratic, and very pro-business. He hired a management firm to streamline government operations and established a budget process controlled largely by economists. He also won approval for a civil service system, long been sought by reformers who wanted positions given on the basis of merit and not patronage; reduced the number of state elections by extending legislative terms from two to four years; and appointed citizens' commissions to advise on nearly every aspect of government. State property taxes dropped sharply under Ritchie, but so did state services. A powerful movie censorship board kept subversive ideas away from the masses. Three times, including 1924 and 1932, Ritchie was a candidate for President of the United States, arguing that Presidents Coolidge and Hoover were hopeless spendthrifts. Ritchie lost his bid for the Democratic Party's nomination for president in 1932. Despite a large demonstration of support at the convention, Franklin D. Roosevelt was nominated and went on to win the election. Ritchie continued to serve as governor until 1935. The Great Depression and World War II Maryland's urban and rural communities had different experiences during the Depression. In 1932 the "Bonus Army" marched through the state on its way to Washington, D.C. In addition to the nationwide New Deal reforms of President Roosevelt, which put people to work building roads and park facilities, Maryland also took steps to weather the hard times. For instance, in 1937 the state instituted its first ever income tax to generate revenue for schools and welfare. The state had some advances in civil rights. The 1935 case Murray v. Pearson et al. resulted in a Baltimore City Court's ordering integration of University of Maryland Law School. The plaintiff in that case was represented by Thurgood Marshall, a young lawyer with the NAACP and a native of Baltimore. When the state attorney general appealed to the Court of Appeals, it affirmed the decision. Because the state did not appeal the ruling in the federal courts, this state ruling under the U.S. Constitution was the first to overturn Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 Supreme Court decision that allowed separate but equal facilities. While the ruling was a moral precedent, it had no authority outside the state of Maryland. A hurricane in 1933 created an inlet in Sinepuxent Bay at Ocean