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Authors: Juan Williams
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office one day, and his secretary would bring sandwiches the next.
“Once in a while, I got a good fee,” Marshall recalled. “Then my secretary would immediately take the check to the bank. She’d call her husband and I’d call Buster, and we’d get the biggest steak in town to celebrate.” 2
It was peanut butter sandwiches more often than steak, however. Marshall hustled for any client he could find, and once in a while the judges at the city court would send black clients to him. But sometimes Marshall did not appreciate the generosity. One day a black woman, with a country accent and a red, tattered skirt, walked into Marshall’s office with legal trouble but no money. He asked how she happened to pick him out to handle her case. She said that in her South Carolina hometown, if anyone had a problem they asked a judge what to do. And when she went to see a judge in Baltimore, he sent her to Marshall, telling her, “He’s a freebie” lawyer. “So I said, ‘I’ve got to stop that crap right now,’ ” Marshall recalled with a laugh.
Marshall’s lack of work meant he had time to take some more NAACP fact-finding trips with Charles Houston. They toured Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, the Carolinas, and Mississippi to investigate segregation in schools. Houston often used a movie camera to document the horrid conditions. The schools usually were wooden structures, no more than shacks. They had no insulation, and it was common to be able to see the sky through the many holes in the roofs. The floors were sometimes dirt and ran thick with mud when rain fell.
The two men prepared reports to send back to the NAACP. “Charlie Houston and I used to type sitting in the car with a typewriter in our laps,” Marshall recalled. The sight of two black men investigating segregated schools sometimes led to threats from local whites. In Mississippi the concerns were so great that the state NAACP president assigned a funeral hearse, with two riflemen inside, to ride behind Houston and Marshall for protection.
Houston’s relationship with Marshall changed during these trips. No longer just Marshall’s teacher, he became a senior partner as they looked at how the law could affect race relations. The always serious Houston engaged Marshall in long discussions over the difference racial integration could make in the lives of black people. If blacks and whites went to the same, integrated schools, Houston argued, then smart black children,like smart white children, could become captains of industry. Integration would mean that whites would interact with blacks, and racist stereotypes would melt away. He impressed upon Marshall the idea that integration was the key to equal rights, because it ensured that blacks and whites got the same opportunities.
Marshall returned from his trips to the Deep South more convinced than ever of the need to overthrow the racist laws that kept southern blacks poor and uneducated. His day-to-day life, however, saw him still struggling to make his law firm a success. But the greatest burden on him—a young man desperate to proclaim his independence—was that he was still living with his parents, in a house filled with bickering and tension.
The family house at 1838 Druid Hill Avenue was crowded, with Norma and Willie, as well as Thurgood and his wife, his brother and sister-in-law, and their new infant child, Aubrey Jr. Sadie’s mother also came to live in the house, which had five bedrooms and only one cramped bathroom for the eight people.
The rough spots in Marshall’s relationship with his father and his brother never did get ironed out; in these conditions they worsened. His father continued to drink heavily, although he still held his job at Gibson Island. The glue that kept the family together was Norma’s strong personality. She held sway over her husband and sons and was the final word in any dispute, over money or the rules for taking food out of the refrigerator. In
“Once in a while, I got a good fee,” Marshall recalled. “Then my secretary would immediately take the check to the bank. She’d call her husband and I’d call Buster, and we’d get the biggest steak in town to celebrate.” 2
It was peanut butter sandwiches more often than steak, however. Marshall hustled for any client he could find, and once in a while the judges at the city court would send black clients to him. But sometimes Marshall did not appreciate the generosity. One day a black woman, with a country accent and a red, tattered skirt, walked into Marshall’s office with legal trouble but no money. He asked how she happened to pick him out to handle her case. She said that in her South Carolina hometown, if anyone had a problem they asked a judge what to do. And when she went to see a judge in Baltimore, he sent her to Marshall, telling her, “He’s a freebie” lawyer. “So I said, ‘I’ve got to stop that crap right now,’ ” Marshall recalled with a laugh.
Marshall’s lack of work meant he had time to take some more NAACP fact-finding trips with Charles Houston. They toured Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, the Carolinas, and Mississippi to investigate segregation in schools. Houston often used a movie camera to document the horrid conditions. The schools usually were wooden structures, no more than shacks. They had no insulation, and it was common to be able to see the sky through the many holes in the roofs. The floors were sometimes dirt and ran thick with mud when rain fell.
The two men prepared reports to send back to the NAACP. “Charlie Houston and I used to type sitting in the car with a typewriter in our laps,” Marshall recalled. The sight of two black men investigating segregated schools sometimes led to threats from local whites. In Mississippi the concerns were so great that the state NAACP president assigned a funeral hearse, with two riflemen inside, to ride behind Houston and Marshall for protection.
Houston’s relationship with Marshall changed during these trips. No longer just Marshall’s teacher, he became a senior partner as they looked at how the law could affect race relations. The always serious Houston engaged Marshall in long discussions over the difference racial integration could make in the lives of black people. If blacks and whites went to the same, integrated schools, Houston argued, then smart black children,like smart white children, could become captains of industry. Integration would mean that whites would interact with blacks, and racist stereotypes would melt away. He impressed upon Marshall the idea that integration was the key to equal rights, because it ensured that blacks and whites got the same opportunities.
Marshall returned from his trips to the Deep South more convinced than ever of the need to overthrow the racist laws that kept southern blacks poor and uneducated. His day-to-day life, however, saw him still struggling to make his law firm a success. But the greatest burden on him—a young man desperate to proclaim his independence—was that he was still living with his parents, in a house filled with bickering and tension.
The family house at 1838 Druid Hill Avenue was crowded, with Norma and Willie, as well as Thurgood and his wife, his brother and sister-in-law, and their new infant child, Aubrey Jr. Sadie’s mother also came to live in the house, which had five bedrooms and only one cramped bathroom for the eight people.
The rough spots in Marshall’s relationship with his father and his brother never did get ironed out; in these conditions they worsened. His father continued to drink heavily, although he still held his job at Gibson Island. The glue that kept the family together was Norma’s strong personality. She held sway over her husband and sons and was the final word in any dispute, over money or the rules for taking food out of the refrigerator. In
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