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Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary
Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall died in January 1993, and the line of mourners stretched around the block throughout the day he laid in state in the Great Hall of the Supreme Court Building. More than 18,000 people paid their respects that day. At the next day's funeral service at the National Cathedral more than 4,000 people were in attendance, including the President and the Vice-President of the United States. At that service, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rhenquist remarked that, with respect to the Supreme Court's motto "Equal Justice under Law," "Surely no one individual did more to make these words a reality than Thurgood Marshall."
Marshall, born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1908 of lower middle class African American parents, showed little promise of greatness as a youth. In fact, people thought him too timid and too good looking. By age 6 he had changed his name from "Thorogood" to Thurgood, showing an independent streak that would be a hallmark of his character for the rest of his life. By age 15, he had a job delivering hats for Mr. Schoen, a Jewish merchant. When trying to get on a bus, Marshall jostled a white woman. A white man intervened and tried to beat him up, calling him a nigger. Thurgood dropped the hats and started punching. He was arrested, and only by Mr. Schoen's intervention was he let go.
In high school, he was a good student, but he was also noted for his practical jokes. In punishment for one prank, he had to memorize the Constitution of the United States. That exercise sparked his lifelong interest in the law. At Lincoln University, his fees were paid by contributions from his extended family and by loans. During the summers, he worked with his father as a waiter, and Williams recounts the story that Marshall allowed a customer, a "big tipping old Senator" to call him a nigger for a whole week. When Marshall's father found out, and fired him for not challenging the insult, Marshall explained: "Now I figure it's worth about $20 to be called a nigger but the moment you've run out of them 20's I'm going to bust you in the nose." His father re-hired...