“We make movies about Malcolm X, we get a holiday to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, but every day we live with the legacy of Justice Thurgood Marshall.”
— January 1993 Washington Afro-American editorial, eulogizing Maryland’s pre-eminent native son
Thus is an introduction into “Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary,” a biography written by “Eyes on the Prize” author, political commentator and National Public Radio host Juan Williams.
What more fitting a way to commemorate the life of the 20th century legal giant, who led the fight to end school segregation, arguing the 1954 landmark Brown v. Board of Education case before the Supreme Court, and who was one of the most influential men in American history not only for black Americans, but all Americans, than to name an international gateway in his honor?
“I’m so excited, I couldn’t believe it,” Mr. Williams said yesterday about the real prospect of the Maryland General Assembly passing legislation to rename Baltimore-Washington International Airport the Thurgood Marshall Baltimore-Washington International Airport.
“I’m sure [Justice Marshall] would be thrilled to see that substantive black political power and progressive political forces in general have made that much of a political shift in the Free State,” Mr. Williams said.
Delegate Emmett C. Burns Jr., Baltimore County Democrat, proposed the bill that seeks to rename BWI. Last week, the bill, which enjoys bipartisan support in the House with 35 co-sponsors, was referred to the committee dealing with transportation.
Mr. Burns seeks to “immortalize” forgotten black figures. He is following a trend to rename major airports after noted black Americans — entertainer Louis Armstrong in New Orleans, murdered civil rights leader Medgar Evers in Jackson, Miss., and former Mayor Maynard Jackson in Atlanta.
The bill is expected to clear the House, but face hurdles in the Senate and with the administration of Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. The best argument voiced against the change is that the state fought long and hard to place a regional moniker on what was originally Friendship Airport, and a new name might hurt those marketing efforts.
Fly me to the moon: Is that the best spin the opposition can come up with? Mr. Ehrlich should recognize that naming the airport for Justice Marshall actually enhances BWI’s prospects of being “an international showcase.” Mr. Marshall also served on the international stage when he was asked by the United Nations and Britain to help draft the constitutions of Ghana and Tanzania.
If for no other reason, the change could be a small gesture to right the terrible racist injustices the young Marylander endured on his way to gaining social, educational and economic equality for all.
Mr. Marshall was born in Baltimore on July 2, 1908, to a middle-class family with an interracial heritage, according to Mr. Williams’ book notes. His father was a dining car waiter, his mother a teacher. He graduated from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and enrolled in Howard University Law School after he was denied admission to the University of Maryland in 1930.
At Howard, he studied under the estimable Charles Hamilton Houston, considered the legal mastermind behind numerous discrimination cases, including Brown v. Board of Education, designed to break Jim Crow practices legally sanctioned by the 1898 Plessy v. Ferguson doctrine of “separate but equal.”
In a bit of irony, Mr. Marshall’s first major case came when he successfully sued the University of Maryland on behalf of another black grad-uate student denied admission in 1933. Even the irascible H.L. Mencken applauded Mr. Marshall’s victory, calling the school’s discriminatory practices “brutal and absurd.” Mr. Marshall established a small law practice in Baltimore in 1933 before joining and eventually heading the legal department of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Elaine Jones is the director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, a post Mr. Marshall held after he created the separate, nonprofit legal foundation of lawyers who remain vigilant in American courts.
“Certain things you claim because they’re yours, and Thurgood Marshall was an integral part of Maryland and helped put Maryland on the map,” Ms. Jones said.
Appointed to the Supreme Court in 1967 by President Johnson, Justice Marshall was a resident of Bethesda when he died on Jan. 24, 1993.
Interviewed by Howard University’s “The Hilltop,” student John Kennedy said, “It’s about time we get legislation celebrating a figure that is overlooked in the civil rights movement, especially during Black History Month. Often when you think of the movement, you think of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, the Black Panthers and so on. Thurgood Marshall made some of the most significant contributions to the black race, and he should be acknowledged for it.”
Mr. Williams said the justice, whom he interviewed during his latter years on the Supreme Court, had grown “cantankerous” and felt people didn’t accord him his just rewards.
He remembered Mr. Marshall going to Baltimore to sit for the statue that now stands outside the federal courthouse in his hometown, and how the justice felt “estranged from Baltimore and Maryland, beginning with the University of Maryland Law School” experience.
“He held a grudge, no question. He felt the state of Maryland was slow to come around on race,” Mr. Williams said. “The state was a very segregated culture going into the ’70s.”
Now, blacks wield considerable power in Annapolis — where another statue of Justice Marshall stands outside the State House — including the highest-ranking black statewide elected official in the land, Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele. Some legacy.
Maryland legislators would do well to honor their laudable progress in providing opportunities for all their residents regardless of race, creed or gender by renaming their international transportation hub after the quintessential symbol for civil rights and equality.
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