An Enduring Legacy for All Americans : Whites as well as blacks owe the late Thurgood Marshall a very great debt of gratitude

In legal parlance one often distinguishes between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. But with Thurgood Marshall, it was neither necessary nor appropriate to make that distinction. For this famous lawyer and Supreme Court justice embodied both.

This great man died Sunday of heart failure, and, in the words of President Clinton, “He was a giant in the quest for human rights and equal opportunity in the whole history of our country. Every American should be grateful for the contributions he made.”

Appropriately, the President placed emphasis on the invaluable contribution Marshall made to “every American.” For if a society permits only some people to be free, no one is truly free. As the pioneering lawyer for the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, Marshall fashioned powerful legal strategies to desegregate America and empower blacks with their full constitutional rights. But Marshall’s great effort also had a corollary effect: helping to free all Americans from the most odious and corrosive effects of institutionalized racism.

As the first black justice of the Supreme Court, where he served for almost a quarter of a century before retiring in June, 1991, Marshall was able to continue that valuable and creative evolution of American law on behalf of the civil rights struggle. But then, in a most controversial appointment, federal Judge Clarence Thomas was picked by then-President George Bush to succeed Marshall. The appointment shocked the civil rights community--and many other Americans--because it was felt that Thomas, a conservative black who served under President Ronald Reagan in a top civil rights post, would fail to carry on the great Marshall tradition.

That would certainly appear to have been a correct assumption. None of Thomas’ decisions so far echoes anything like his predecessor’s outspoken commitment to the use of federal law to advance civil rights. But if Marshall’s legacy is to mean anything at all, it may very well suggest that a strong commitment to equal rights for all isn’t so much a matter of a person’s color as of a person’s heart. On that score, Marshall had the heart of a lion--and a big-hearted vision that will be his eternal legacy.