FOREWORD by Thurgood Marshall Jr.
 

Many works about my father have been assembled, ranging from formal works of scholarship to popular biographical profiles to children’s books, movies, and documentaries. With this detailed and carefully crafted volume, Professor Larry S. Gibson has crafted a unique and engrossing portrait.

The photograph that graces the cover speaks volumes about the content of this book. The tall, striking, and confident figure is unmistakable, yet it is an image of Thurgood Marshall that is rarely if ever seen, even by those who have studied his life or who knew him well.

The cover photo is just one of countless treasures from my father’s early and formative years that Professor Gibson has unearthed. Through the rich collection of childhood anecdotes; the insights into the colorful assemblage of relatives, mentors, and legal clients who shaped my father’s development; and the recounting of the challenges and opportunities my father encountered in his local community and throughout our country, this book weaves together the events that formed the foundation for my father’s career.

Professor Gibson’s attention to detail and thorough research is apparent throughout this book. His sleuthing has led him to courthouses and clerk’s offices as well as to professional and personal correspondence in many locales. That trove of information has enabled him to understand the ways in which my father applied his talent and skill and faced his own personal challenges.

Readers will see in this book the origins of my father’s penchant for storytelling and his desire to act as an advocate for fairness on behalf of those who are marginalized in American society. Professor Gibson sets the stage with a gritty sense of the tone of the times when my father was born in Baltimore, which at that time was a segregated city not far from communities that often tilted toward vigilante justice instead of the rule of law. This book brings to life the array of relatives and friends who surrounded my father as he grew up and demonstrates how an early focus on academics and debate honed his skills and determined his interests for alifetime. With classmates like Cab Calloway and Langston Hughes, there was little room in his social circle for shrinking violets or backbenchers. And there was plenty of room for creative fun and mischief. Law school brought those experiences together in new ways and gave my father the tools he needed to live a life of consequence.

This book also details the breadth of my father’s legal work. By the time my father began arguing cases before the US Supreme Court, he had already handled a diverse array of client interests that included divorces, simple assaults, and capital murder cases. Here, too, are chronicled my father’s early involvement with politics, the civil rights movement, and the NAACP, as well as his early efforts to bring equality to education, voting, housing, and the fabric of American society. Young Thurgood provides that information in an enjoyable way, even to the point of letting us know about the kind of employment my father found after the workday was over to make ends meet.

Professor Gibson has given us a book that contains many new factsand insights and presents them in compelling prose. The result is as entertainingas it is unique, poignant, and informative.

Thurgood Marshall Jr.