Thurgood Marshall

the Novel

Thurgood Marshall
the Open Window
by
Forest Hairston

He followed a wonderful path that he himself had dared to create, and Thurgood Marshall found an open window. He walked on through the open window and knew that the world sorely needed the courage he had to offer. Ambitious and highly intelligent, Thurgood worked hard for his education and when he looked back down the long road where it all began, he was wearing a sleek black robe. Thurgood Marshall was wearing the elegant black robe of a United States Supreme Court Justice. Along the winding road, he attended Lincoln University in Chester County, Pennsylvania. It was a fine college renown for being the nation's oldest historically Black college. But he accepted the challenge and truly enjoyed his educational experience. Let it be known that Thurgood Marshall graduated from Lincoln University with high honors.

Then seemingly abrupt, he fell in love with a young lady, Vivien Burley, and married that beautiful lady in the same year of 1930. And with her strong support, Thurgood, applied to The University of Maryland School of Law. But yet this fine, intelligent young man was sadly rejected, simply because he wore a face of color. Still here, young Thurgood walked on toward his destiny. And in Washington, D.C., he excelled in his law studies at Howard University Law School. There in the hard Great Depression year of 1933, Thurgood graduated first in his class.

Black History

Black Legends

Thurgood Marshall was born in a thriving town called Baltimore, Maryland, in 1908. And he knew firsthand that he was born in a city yet reeking with the stench of slavery. Maryland was where Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman and many other Black slaves were born. And forever it touched Thurgood deeply knowing that his grandfather was a former slave as well. He himself was born only a few years beyond Black bondage. And perhaps it was because of his anger against oppression that he became a warrior for truth and justice.

A fabulous NAACP civil rights lawyer from 1939 to 1961. Marshall fought severely in the court of law against racial segregation. He dedicated his mind and soul to that cause throughout his brilliant career. And for all that his life achieved, he did it with humble grace and majestic style. Appointed to the Supreme Court by President Lyndon B. Johnson, in the swollen year of 1967, during tension of Black Power and racial unrest, Mr. Thurgood Marshall became the first Black justice sitting on the Supreme Court of the United States of America. And there, his arguments became the greater influence in the Supreme Court's decision to outlaw racial segregation of schools in the United States. Thurgood Marshall has left our Black History a legacy that will ever remain. But beyond it all, he has left our younger generation the open window. Thurgood Marshall . . . a Legendary Face.