Marshall's roots

    Thurgood Marshall grew up in a family of strong minded people.  His great grandfather was set free after his master said, “Look, I brought you here so I guess I can’t very well shoot you- as you deserve.  On the other hand, I can’t with a clear conscience sell anyone as vicious as you to another slaveholder, and I can’t give you away.  So, I am going to set you free- on one condition.  Get the hell out of this county and never come back.”  Justice Marshall commented that that was the only time that his great-grandfather didn’t argue with his master.  When Thurgood’s great-grandfather went to enlist in fighting in the Civil War for the North, he had to make up a first name for himself.  The name he took, Thoroughgood, is what Thurgood’s name is based upon.

            Both of Thurgood’s parents were light skinned African-Americans, which was important in Baltimore.  His father, William Canfield Marshall, was a waiter at an exclusive, white’s-only club, the Gibson Island Club. Thurgood himself was an active child; he is quoted as saying, “We lived on a respectable street, but behind us were back alleys where roughnecks and the tough kids hung out.  When it was time for dinner, my mother used to go to the front door to call my older brother.  Then she’d go to the back door and call me.”  His high spirits occasionally got Thurgood into trouble.  His elementary school principal was a peculiar disciplinarian; he sent Thurgood to the basement to study the Constitution.  Justice Marshall admitted that, “Before I left that school, I knew the entire Constitution by heart.”  This was the ideal lead-in to a question Thurgood asked his father one day. He asked why white citizens had more rights than black ones.  While William Marshall didn’t have a college education or an answer to Thurgood's natural question, he did spend much of his time at the local courtroom, and often brought Thurgood along.  He was also the first black man to serve on a grand jury in Baltimore.  It was common practice to have the jurors find out what race the person under investigation is.  On William’s third day of service, he suggested that the jury drop that practice, and since that day that question has never again been asked on that jury.

            William Marshall once said to Thurgood when he was a boy, “Anyone calls you ‘nigger’ you not only got my permission to fight him- you got my orders to fight him.” One day while Thurgood was working for a local hat store, he was carrying a sizeable load of hats, and when he went to get on the bus, he couldn’t see in front of him.  A white man grabbed Thurgood by the collar and said, “Nigger, don’t you push in front of no white lady again.”  Thurgood then began to fight as hard as a tall, awkward, fourteen-year old boy can.  When policeman Army Matthews came onto the scene he reacted differently from any other typical white, southern policeman.  Most would allow the white crowd assembled to beat up the black “offender” and then arrest him.  Matthews instead took them both to the police station and released them both later without filing charges.

            Thurgood finished high school at age 16 and worked that summer to pay for his education at Lincoln University.  At Lincoln, the black Princeton as it was called, Thurgood was classmate and friend of Langston Hughes, among others.  He got good grades despite his tendency to play card games and attend parties.  He once went to a movie theater in nearby Oxford.  Instead of going to the balcony allotted for African Americans, he and his friends sat in the white’s only orchestra area, and successfully desegregated the theater.  This started Thurgood on his civil rights profession.  Since Lincoln University was a religious institution, Marshall and his friends became churchgoers.  He later explained that “that was where all the 'cute chicks' went.”  

            One of those "cute chicks" was his first wife, Vivian Burey, with whom he had a childless marriage.  There were four miscarriages in their 25 year relationship until she died in February 1955.  She had a reputation as a level-headed woman, and she had a stabilizing effect on Thurgood.  Since he was still in college, and he had honed his forensic skills in debates with his father, he joined the debate team.  He had victories over colleges such as Bates, Bowdoin, and Colby, earning him the nickname “the Wrathful Marshall.”  He graduated from Lincoln with Honors, and applied to the University of Maryland, an obvious choice since he was now living at home in Baltimore, except they didn’t accept African Americans there.  He then applied to Howard University’s Law school in Washington D.C. Even though he had to work at either his academic studies or his job from 5:30 in the morning till midnight he thoroughly enjoyed his time at Howard.  The academic sparring and verbal jests proved that his time spent in undergraduate debate was well spent and adapted for his career in law.