'Thurgood' play captures Justice Thurgood Marshall

[Blue_Tires]

In his last years on the Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall was old, tired and "coming apart," as he put it. Support for civil rights seemed to be coming apart too, as his fellow liberals retired and were replaced by Reagan-era conservatives.

But Marshall had been a fighter all of his life, and he was not about to give up. When a new crop of young law clerks arrived each year, the gruff, old justice would lean forward to confide in them. "If I die," he said ominously, "prop me up and keep voting!"

Marshall was not only the courtroom leader of the civil rights movement and the first African American to ascend to the high court, but he was also a great storyteller.

His aim was not humor, although many of his tales came with a hilarious punch line.

Marshall used his stories — and his sly wit — to tell the other justices about a life they could not have experienced.

In "Thurgood," actor Laurence Fishburne brings to the stage the old warrior for racial justice, and in a 90-minute performance, he re-creates the authentic Marshall through his words and stories. "Thurgood" runs through Aug. 8 at the Geffen Playhouse.

His is a powerful story, and it is told as the old justice reflects back on his life. Marshall had grown up in Baltimore when racial segregation was the law. In his first job as delivery boy for a clothing store, he was thrown off a trolley car, allegedly for brushing against a white woman. Young Marshall, and the fine hats he was carrying, ended up on the ground.

He also recalled traveling through small towns of the South as a young lawyer. He represented black defendants before all-white juries. At times, his life was in danger, and at the trial's end, Marshall admitted he took the first train out of town. The real heroes, he said, were those who stayed behind. And of course, there is a story of Marshall's long courtroom fight against racial segregation. This apartheid system rested on the doctrine of "separate but equal," the Supreme Court's notion that separate public facilities for whites and blacks were legal under the Constitution so long as they were equal in quality.

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jul/13/entertainment/la-et-thurgood-savage-20100713