WHRO-TV Is Airing Documentary On Thurgood Marshall

By Rosaland Tyler
Associate Editor
New journal and Guide

Does the newly-released documentary on Thurgood Marshall shed light on the Bible passage, “There is nothing new under the sun?”

Marshall’s documentary is being aired on WHRO-TV. Some viewers may watch and conclude the new documentary mirrors today’s sometimes perplexing historical twists and turns. But the documentary may also remind viewers that Marshall had a habit of fighting culture wars in court. During the Jim Crow era, Marshall won 29 of the 32 cases he argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, including the landmark Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, which ended racial segregation in public schools. Marshall died of heart failure at Bethesda Naval Medical Center in Maryland at 2 p.m., at age 84, in 1993.

The documentary is titled, “Becoming Thurgood: America’s Social Architect.” It chronicles Marshall’s career as a civil rights attorney who went on to serve as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1967 until 1991. He was appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson and became the first Black justice in the Court’s history.

After the 1978 Bakke ruling overruled race quotas and ruled a state-run medical school could not reserve 16 of 100 places in the entering class for Black and other minority students, Marshall wrote, “In light of the sorry history of discrimination and its devastating impact on the lives of Negroes, bringing the Negro into the mainstream of American life should be a state interest of the highest order. To fail to do so is to insure that America will forever remain a divided society.”

“Justice Marshall was not satisfied with what he had achieved, believing that the Constitution’s promise of equality remained unfulfilled and that his work was therefore unfinished,” his obituary in the New York Times noted.

The recently-released documentary is sponsored in part by Morgan State University, Theralogix, Sage Policy Group, and Allan M. and Shelley Holt (through the Hillside Foundation).

It was created by Emmy Award-winning and Oscar-nominated filmmaker Stanley Nelson and MPT Senior Vice President and Chief Content Officer Travis Mitchell. The documentary was produced and directed by Alexis Aggrey, with music by two-time Grammy Award-winning composer Derrick Hodge.

Aggrey said, “For the first time, audiences will hear Thurgood Marshall tell his own story – in his own words. This film is the first to center Marshall’s own voice, drawn from a rare eight-hour oral history. It’s not just a documentary; it’s a conversation with a man whose legal mind reshaped the nation and whose legacy still echoes through our justice system today.”

To view, go to WHRO website.