Thurgood Marshall

by Juan Williams

  “He ran it all until he got in the way of somebody who was white,” the son recalled later. “I mean after all, a Negro steward is a little high, you know, for a Negro.” Willie Marshall subsequently got a job at the Afro-American, with Thurgood’s help, but that job didn’t last long. “He was on the newspaper a month or so,” Marshall said, thinking back to that time. “I mean he had a low boiling point, man. He’d quit at the drop of a hat for nothing.”

  Unlike his father, the shrewd young lawyer did not blow his cool over his difficulty with people or jobs. He waited and planned, looking for the right moment to push for a contract with the national NAACP. That effort got a boost in the summer of 1936, when the NAACP held its twenty-seventh annual conference in Baltimore. During the weeklong conference he dined nightly with Houston, Walter White, and Roy Wilkins. Best of all, Carl Murphy arranged for Marshall to give a major speech on disparities between the education of black and white children. White was impressed with Marshall’s forceful yet down-home and personal speech. In addition, Marshall benefited from the afterglow of the conference because a record number of new members signed up, and money poured into the NAACP national treasury.

  “It was one of the greatest conferences in the history of the association,” Wilkins wrote to Marshall just after the convention. “The success of the Baltimore conference was due in no small measure to your assistance on the program.”17

  Houston used the upbeat feelings generated by the conference to press White for help in handling the NAACP’s legal affairs; specifically he wanted White to go to the board and ask them to hire Thurgood Marshall. Houston spent most of his time on the road as an “evangelist and stump speaker,” raising money for the NAACP. He felt there was a need for someone to take care of the daily legal affairs in the office. White agreed.

  “I don’t know of anybody I would rather have in the office or anybody who can do a better job of research and preparation of cases,” Houston wrote to Marshall. But he insisted that Marshall close his Baltimore law practice. “It simply isn’t possible to do two independent jobs to full satisfaction.… You would be of more value to the Association at $200 in New York than at $150 in Baltimore.”18

  Marshall did not take long to come to Houston’s point of view when he looked at his law practice’s lack of profits. And he realized that without Houston’s guidance and the NAACP’s treasury, he might never get to do the work of breaking down segregation—the work he really wanted to do. In an October 1936 letter agreeing to take a six-month assignment with the NAACP, Marshall wrote to White: “I will be indebted to you and Charlie for a long time to come for many reasons, one of which is that I have an opportunity now to do what I have always dreamed of doing!”19

  Despite the thrill of getting the big job he coveted, Marshall was torn about leaving Baltimore. The family house on Druid Hill was in turmoil. His mother would never stop him from leaving for the job in New York, but Marshall worried that the family was on the verge of exploding.

  CHAPTER 8

  Leaving Home

  JUST AS BUSTER AND THURGOOD were about to leave Baltimore in October 1936, all hell broke loose.

  Aubrey’s lingering cold had gotten worse. Thurgood could hear his hacking and coughing through the night. His older brother looked frail and was missing more and more work. His body, as well as his stylish dress, began to deteriorate. Sadie, his wife, started to shun him, pushing her husband out of their bed. Aubrey was left to the care of his mother and father.

  Willie Marshall had his own troubles. He was still out of work and bitter about it. That led to more drinking and more fights with his wife. And when Sadie and her mother were around, Willie blasted them over their callous treatment of Aubrey.

  Thurgood and Buster tried to support the family as best they could. But when the job offer came from the NAACP in New York, they did not know what to do. Norma Marshall, however, did not hesitate. She was steadfast in her ambition for Thurgood, and told him it was time for him to go. She even made plans for him and Buster to stay with her sister, Medi.

  Thurgood was still not sure he should go; he felt obligated to his family. Torn between ambition and emotion, he reluctantly decided that New York wasn’t that far away. He began to make plans to close his office when the family was hit with a jolt. Aubrey’s watery eyes and hacking cough turned out to be tuberculosis.

  The once debonair Dr. Aubrey Marshall was totally crushed by the news. As a physician he realized how far developed the potentially fatal disease was in his body and feared he was about to die. The highly contagious nature of the illness forced him to close his medical practice.

  Aubrey had no idea where he had contracted TB, but his work had clearly exposed him to a number of people who had it. Both in his office and at the city health clinic in Old West Baltimore, he had tended to patients from areas where the poor were forced to crowd together in alleys littered with open bags of garbage, scrawny stray dogs, and rats. Thirty years earlier the disease had reached epidemic proportions in urban areas throughout the nation. By the mid-1930s it was slowing, but its victims were still a common part of the American scene.

  Now that Aubrey was identified as a TB carrier, his wife would not even come close to him. Even worse, Sadie refused to let him within sight of his only child. Norma Marshall and Sadie got into furious arguments over Sadie’s unsympathetic attitude. Norma wanted her son at home, with family, where someone would always be with him. But Sadie, fearing for her own well-being, wanted Aubrey out of the house and in a hospital.

  “My mother said he had to go because she didn’t want him breathing germs around me,” Aubrey Jr. said as an adult.1 The argument between the two women climaxed when Sadie, her mother, and Aubrey Jr. packed their belongings and without a word moved out of the house. Aubrey, already sick and now depressed, was left at home with his mother and father and in need of medical care. The best TB hospitals in Maryland, however, admitted only whites.

  Still, Norma Marshall, with tears in her eyes, told Thurgood and Buster that her troubles should not be their troubles. With a plainspoken approach, she said Thurgood’s future was in New York and the family owed him as much support as they were giving Aubrey. After she coached Uncle Fearless, Norma brought him in to tell Thurgood that staying in a failing law practice wasn’t going to help Aubrey or anyone else.

  Thurgood and Buster made the move to New York in October 1936, and began living with the Dodsons (Aunt Medi and Uncle Boots). They were in the same Harlem apartment that Thurgood had lived in as an infant when his father had worked on the New York Central with Boots. The apartment seemed uncrowded and quiet in comparison with the coughing, the fighting, and the crying baby that had filled their home in Baltimore. Thurgood had little memory of his childhood days in Harlem, but he immediately took to the bustling, big city atmosphere. He had no money and few friends outside the NAACP’s offices, but just walking around was a kick for him. He and Buster spent most of their time playing cards with the Dodsons, who were in their late fifties and loved the young couple’s energy.

  When his mother wrote or on rare occasions called, Thurgood would hear about Aubrey’s declining health and the segregated hospitals in Maryland. Norma asked if he could find a good hospital in New York that accepted blacks. “I got him in Bellevue Hospital in New York, where he had an operation to take that lung out,” Marshall later recalled. Aubrey also lost half his other lung, leaving him with only half a lung and labored breathing. Aunt Medi, Thurgood, and Buster made frequent visits to the hospital to see him. Thurgood was religious about spending Monday nights visiting his brother.

  Aubrey’s medical bills, especially for the operation, were a heavy financial burden on Norma. Willie brought money into the house only now and then; his drinking made it difficult for him to find a good-paying job. The family’s only steady paycheck these days came from Norma’s teaching job. It was the key to what remained of the family’s ebbing stability. That job, so crucial to the family, did not come about just beca
use of Norma’s intelligence and warmth with children. She had to veil her considerable pride to ask for the job from black Baltimore’s political boss, Tom Smith.

  A heavyset man who wore only tailored suits and drove a big black car, Smith had earned a small fortune running an illegal numbers game, with backing from white racketeers, out of a small saloon on Jasper Street before he built the grand Smith Hotel in 1912. But he had really made his name in the late 1920s, when he allegedly stole ballot boxes from black precincts that were strongly Republican. With those votes out of the way, Howard Jackson was able to beat his Republican mayoral opponent, and Tom Smith became the king of Baltimore black politics.

  And Smith held the key to full-time work in the city’s black schools. Essie Hughes, one of Thurgood’s classmates, recalled: “Any black person who wanted an outstanding job, even in teaching, had to consult Tom Smith.”2

  “I don’t think you will ever see another black with such extensive power in Baltimore,” said Teddy Stewart, one of the Marshalls’ neighbors. “Yes sir, he was a giant. If you wanted to run an illegal business—liquor, gambling, or prostitution, you had to see Tom Smith. He kept his hotel open during Prohibition. All the whites would come to Smith’s Hotel because the policemen were taking money from Smith and they would be standing at the door, nobody bothered, didn’t care.”3

  “He controlled everything in the district,” said Cab Calloway, who recalled that gambling at Smith’s began around 8:00 P.M. and lasted into the early morning, with many patrons dressed in tuxedos. “It was the only spot to be,” said Calloway. “It was elite.”4

  To see Tom Smith about a teaching job, Norma Marshall had to go into the Smith Hotel. The short man with the shiny bald head would sit in the lobby on a lounge chair, watching over the characters and businessmen who flowed through the hotel’s ornate front doors. Not only did he know everyone in Old West Baltimore, but he made it a point to keep up with neighborhood gossip. So Smith likely knew Norma Marshall the minute she put her head in the hotel. And he no doubt knew about her husband’s drinking problems, his difficulty keeping jobs, Thurgood’s departure for New York, and the family’s money troubles.

  Norma Marshall always walked with an erect posture, head held high. One look at her told children and adults that she was a dignified woman with no tolerance for fools, chicanery, or political players. But a humble Norma walked over to Smith and waited until he spoke to her. In the swirl of painted women and cigar smoke, she introduced herself. Smith listened politely as she pleaded with him for a full-time job in the city schools.

  Smith liked her daring approach and pride. He took to Norma. He decided he wanted her loyalty and friendship. After all he was a politician, and he understood that the black schools were beloved in Old West Baltimore. If he didn’t keep the schools filled with good teachers, it could cause problems for him. Soon after her trip to the hotel, Norma got a call telling her where to go downtown to get a full-time teaching assignment for the coming year.5

  Even with the job she had long coveted, Norma was still scraping by. She was paying every extra cent she had to the hospitals and doctors who cared for her Aubrey. After a long recuperation from the surgery on his lungs, Aubrey was moved to a sanitarium in Saranac, New York.

  Norma’s struggle to pay her bills was common for the black middle class in Baltimore. She was lucky to have such a good job, but a black teacher made substantially less than a white teacher, sometimes as much as 40 percent less. Carl Murphy’s Afro-American had long complained about this disparity. But black teachers were reluctant to risk their jobs by putting their names on a lawsuit challenging racially separate pay scales, especially during the Depression.

  Thurgood Marshall knew about the difference between the pay that went to white teachers and the money his mother brought home every week. Just as he had been angered by the segregation at the University of Maryland Law School, he took it personally that his mother’s work was valued less than a white teacher’s. Even though he had moved to New York, Marshall frequently traveled back to Maryland, seeking black teachers to act as plaintiffs for NAACP suits against school boards to equalize teachers’ pay.

  The white leaders of the school systems were aware of Marshall’s efforts and began taking steps to block a repeat of his victory in the Murray case. They intimidated or bought off several black teachers rumored to be involved in NAACP suits.

  Marshall could have asked his mother to volunteer to have her name on a pay equity suit. But she worked in Baltimore city schools, which did not have as large a difference in pay as the state’s rural counties. In any case, she could not risk losing her job, and her son never put her in the awkward position of having to say yes or no.

  He did finally find someone willing to take the gamble. William Gibbs, a principal in Montgomery County, allowed Marshall to use his name. White school officials in Montgomery had not engaged in the tactics used by some of the more southern Maryland counties to scare black teachers. Instead, county officials decided it would be better to avoid a lengthy trial. They had no interest in having Marshall lay out the inequality between school facilities for black and white children as part of his case. Before the July 1937 court date, Marshall won an out-of-court settlement in which Montgomery County agreed to a two-year plan for equalizing the pay between black and white teachers.

  “The NAACP won a sudden and sensational victory in its suit to equalize teacher salaries in Montgomery County, Md.,” the Afro-American reported.6 The fight was not over quite yet, though.

  Several months later, when Marshall traveled from New York to Annapolis, Maryland’s state capital, to deal with a similar suit that black school principal Walter Mills had filed against the Anne Arundel County school system, he ran into a fire wall of opposition from the white superintendent, George Fox. In Fox’s opinion Montgomery County had caved in, and he decided that he would make a stand. He wanted the case to go to trial and was sure that he could defeat the NAACP and their brash young attorney, Thurgood Marshall.

  Superintendent Fox argued in court that “his poorest white teacher was a better teacher than his best colored teacher.” An astounded Marshall did not respond to Fox’s insult. Instead he adopted a strategy of revealing Fox to be no judge of teaching talent and a simple racist. Marshall asked the superintendent why black teachers, and not white teachers, had to scrub classroom floors. The now indignant Fox testified with a vicious scowl “this had always been blacks’ work.”7 Marshall took his seat. It was risky, but Marshall in his charming, deferential way was trying to separate the white judge from the white superintendent by exposing Fox as a hateful buffoon.

  The strategy worked. Judge W. Calvin Chesnut ruled for the black teachers. “The crucial question in this case,” he wrote in his decision, “is whether the very substantial differential between the salaries of white and colored teachers in Anne Arundel County is due to discrimination on account of race or color. I find as a fact from the testimony that it is.”8

  The governor and the Maryland legislature took grudging note of Marshall’s winning streak on the equal pay issue and decided it would cost them money and time to continue this losing fight from county to county. The state passed a law setting a single standard for black and white teachers.

  With his victory in Maryland, Marshall began to pursue equal pay cases in other states. He won most. But a few years later he lost a teacher pay case dealing with the Norfolk, Virginia, school system. Nonetheless, a federal appeals court overturned that decision. Norfolk’s all-white school board appealed to the Supreme Court. It was the first time a teachers’ pay case had risen to that level. The Supreme Court ruled by refusing to hear Norfolk’s appeal, effectively handing a golden victory to Marshall and the black teachers. After the Norfolk ruling was let stand, the NAACP used it as a precedent to insist on the ending of two pay scales for black and white teachers around the country.

  That victory was a personal one for Marshall. The NAACP trumpeted the high court’s ruling as a trium
ph against racism and an endorsement of the dignity and ability of black teachers. But for the young lawyer behind the lawsuits, it was a victory for his mother and for the regular paycheck his family needed so badly.

  With that win behind him, a more secure Marshall began to settle into his work in the national office. The family turmoil that had almost kept him out of New York was now past. His brother was recuperating and was going to live. He and Buster were settled in the city. And the newly confident young lawyer from Baltimore was ready to take on some racial fights that went beyond his mother and Maryland. He was about to redefine America.

  CHAPTER 9

  69 Fifth Avenue

  RIGHT FROM THE START, Marshall was thrilled just to be in NAACP headquarters, at 69 Fifth Avenue in New York. He shared a tiny, second-floor office with Houston, but to Marshall it felt like he was at the center of the world.

  He was twenty-eight years old and happy—happy to talk to the janitor, share cigarettes with the secretaries, and let his loud laugh ring through the offices when he told jokes. By the end of most days his shirt-tail was hanging out and his tie was loose.

  He made quite a contrast to the forty-one-year-old Houston. Cement Pants was still the reserved, formal man he had been as a dean at Howard. He came in early, always in freshly pressed suits and heavily starched shirts. He almost never smiled, and when he spoke he addressed everyone as “Mr.” or “Mrs.” To the secretaries and even the NAACP board members, he was a taskmaster who insisted that every detail, every word, and every letter be perfect.

  But Houston and Marshall, an odd couple to everyone who watched them in the office, had become a perfect pair. They had known each other for six years by now, and Houston was constantly impressed with Marshall’s ability to handle the most difficult tasks. Houston had even developed a delight in Marshall’s antics—his large hands moving as he told stories that usually ended with his big voice booming out in laughter. Marshall, for his part, still had eyes filled with awe for his former dean and saw the opportunity to work with him as the chance to play with the biggest of the big boys. He was eager to learn and willing to live within the small budget Houston had to run the office.