December 29, 2012 - January 4, 2013, The Afro-American
A9
COMMENTARY
The Maryland of Thurgood Marshall
In a year when volunteers from Maryland played a major role in re-electing America’s first Black President, it is worthwhile recalling the lasting civil rights legacy of our State. This has been University of Maryland Law School Professor Larry Gibson’s mission for nearly four decades. I know this because he has been my mentor since high school. Congressman I was Larry Gibson’s law Elijah Cummings clerk in 1975 when Professor Gibson, a skilled civil rights advocate himself, first met Thurgood Marshall late one August night. He and a colleague were seeking an emergency order in the case of former Baltimore City Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Roland N. Patterson. For a couple of hours, Justice Marshall regaled the young lawyers with his obvious affection for his home town of Baltimore This truth about Baltimore and the man whom many consider Maryland’s greatest gift to America set my teacher and friend off on a journey to discover Justice Marshall’s beginnings. In his resulting biography, Young Thurgood: The Making of a Supreme Court Justice, which had its public debut at the Pratt Library on Dec. 13, Professor Gibson brought that odyssey to a remarkable conclusion. Larry Gibson thoroughly and brilliantly illustrates how, during the first three decades of the 20th Century, the creative tension between Maryland’s border state culture and our tradition of advocacy by the largest “Free Black” population outside the Old South called young Thurgood Marshall to the Civil Rights Movement. Professor Gibson traces Thurgood Marshall’s unrelenting efforts to prepare himself for a life of advocacy – and how the civil rights lawyers of his youth became his role models and colleagues. He reveals how our own Baltimore AFRO American and the Oliver and Mitchell families, in particular, earned special commendation by their dedicated efforts during the struggles for justice, economic opportunity, fair housing and our other civil rights. In a very real sense, he allows us to view Thurgood Marshall in double exposure because he reveals the Justice through our lense. By recounting his life of our community, he allows us all to see ourselves in this real and often heroic chapter of our history. I commend Young Thurgood, however, not only to African Americans but to every American of every ethnic background who wishes to better understand our nation’s ongoing struggle for universal civil rights. We are living in a time when callous efforts at voter suppression continue to plague our civic and political life. Those attacks, as well as the ongoing struggle for economic opportunity, better education, affordable healthcare and decent housing, reveal a hard but necessary truth. The Civil Rights Movement in America, far from being over, is just beginning. This reality, as much as our profound admiration for a giant in America’s legal evolution toward a more just society, is why Young Thurgood should have a honored place on the bookshelves of every home where it can touch our hearts and
minds and those of our children. For myself, both as an American of Color, and as a lawyer, I can’t help having a special place in my heart for Justice Thurgood Marshall, who once lived on Druid Hill Avenue not far from where I live today. In 1935, two years after he began his law practice here in Baltimore, the young lawyer took up the cause of Donald Murray in what, ultimately, was a successful legal effort to integrate the University of Maryland School of Law. On Murray’s behalf, Marshall & Charles Hamilton Houston challenged Maryland’s racially exclusionary policy in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City. Circuit Court Judge Eugene O’Dunne agreed, and the Maryland Court of Appeals affirmed in Murray v. Pearson. As a result, I could attend the University of Maryland School of Law in 1973. Juan Williams, in his 1990 Washington Post article on Marshall, reported the recollection of another of my mentors, NAACP lawyer Juanita Jackson Mitchell: “The colored people in Baltimore were on fire when Thurgood did that....They were euphoric with victory. . . . We didn’t know about the Constitution. He brought us the Constitution as a document like Moses brought his people the Ten Commandments.” Thurgood Marshall had embarked on a 18-year journey
which would take him through Chambers v. Florida, Smith v. Allwright, Shelley v. Kraemer and Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. It was a journey that, ultimately, would make him Solicitor General of the United States and an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. In Young Thurgood, Professor Gibson’s exhaustive research tells us the beginnings of that historic effort. As Americans, we need to know this story. We need to know why and how Thurgood Marshall and others helped us to become a better nation. As we reflect upon Professor Gibson’s answer to those questions, we, ourselves, will be better prepared to continue the Civil Rights Movement of our own time. We must never forget Juanita Jackson Mitchell’s words: We didn’t know about the Constitution. He brought us the Constitution as a document like Moses brought his people the Ten Commandments. Moving forward with that legacy remains our challenge today – and for reminding us of this calling, Professor Larry Gibson deserves our commendation and applause. Congressman Elijah Cummings represents Maryland’s 7th Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives.
The Real ‘First Black President’ “Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, what they did was William Reed hard. It takes time. It takes more than a single term. It takes more than a single president … and more than a single individual.” – Barack Obama Barack Obama became America’s first Black president in 2009. Nelson Rohihlahia Mandela preceded Obama to the top of his government, being inaugurated as South Africa’s first Black president on May 10, 1994. Both presidents will be remembered in history but the 94-year-old Mandela holds higher “street cred.” He commands a level of respect that grew out of issues that are 40 years ahead of Obama. Born July 18, 1918 in the Transkei region of South Africa, Mandela was steeped in Black culture. Mandela’s life and works represent a vision and values that demonstrate new levels of achievement and life’s possibilities for Blacks. Mandela’s father was Tembu Tribe Chief Henry Mandela. Nelson was groomed to become the next chief to rule his tribe. He attended the prestigious all-Black Fort Hare College, a key institution in higher education for Black Africans from 1916-1959. Fort Hare created an African elite that was part of many movements and governments of newly independent African countries. Not to be confused with Obama’s post-racial ideology, Mandela represents real Black power. He is the movement’s uncompromising force and figure. When he realized that non-violence would not suffice, Mandela resorted to guerilla warfare to achieve his means. The U.S. government still considers Mandela and the ANC as terrorists. Mandela still needs to get a special waiver to enter the U.S. The iconic struggle between the apartheid regime of South Africa and those who resisted it has a complex timeline that begins with
the founding of Cape Town in 1652 by the Dutch East India Company as a way station between the Netherlands and the East Indies. As it developed into a settlement, it was populated by the European ancestors of the Afrikaners, who eventually were the White minority comprising less than 20 percent of the population but who had nearly complete control of the nation’s government and economy. November 1962, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 1761, establishing the United Nations Special Committee against Apartheid and imposing economic sanctions on South Africa. Through campus demonstrations,
“The iconic struggle between the apartheid regime of South Africa and those who resisted it has a complex timeline…” corporate boycotts, media and music campaigns, the U.S.based activists helped galvanize efforts against apartheid. The international movement of solidarity with the South African struggle was arguably the biggest social movement the world has seen. In his lifetime, Mandela went from anti-apartheid activist to prisoner to South Africa’s first Black president from 1994
to 1999. It’s important to note Mandela’s militant activism. In 1962 he was arrested, convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. He served 27 years, many of these on Robben Island. Following his Feb. 11, 1990 release, Mandela used reconciliation between Whites and Blacks as the bedrock of the “Rainbow Nation.” Mandela became the globe’s symbol of resistance to racism. But, as we enter 2013, an overwhelming majority of South Africans now see him as a figure firmly rooted in the past with limited impact on their future. Democratic South Africa, the “Rainbow Nation” is just 18 years old. Most of the nation’s people were children or not even born when Mandela was released from prison in 1990. A whole generation has been “born free” since racial segregation ended with the country’s first democratic elections in 1994. Almost 60 percent of South Africans are under 35 years old – 29 percent are younger than 15. With this country’s Blacks’ adoration of Obama, it’s important to point out that both their Black presidencies have left some wanting and illustrate the “fool’s gold” Blacks have about “political empowerment.” In both places, the races remain bitterly divided by economics: White households’ incomes in both countries are six times higher than that of their Black counterparts. Mandela calls Israel’s structure of political and cultural relationship with Palestinians, an “apartheid system.” Obama baits Palestinians with the possibility of resumption of U.S. aid on condition they “renounce terrorism.” William Reed is head of the Business Exchange Network and available for speaking/seminar projects through the Bailey Group.org.