WASHINGTON – He called her Shorty. She called him the most important lawyer of the 20th century.
Now, in a case of uncanny timing, the story of former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall is taking center stage at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts just as the Senate prepares to take up the nomination of his one-time clerk, Elena Kagan, to join the high court.
Marshall, the first Black justice on the court, is brought to life by actor Laurence Fishburne in the one-man play “Thurgood.” The production opened on Broadway in 2008 and earned Fishburne a Tony Award nomination.
Its debut in Washington is hugely symbolic. This is where Marshall attended Howard University Law School, where he argued and won the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case to make school segregation illegal, and where he later mentored Kagan as a law clerk.
Kagan, who worked for Marshall when he was nearing 80 and in poor health, doesn’t figure in the play. But she has spoken often of her admiration for the justice, calling him “the most important and probably the greatest lawyer of the 20th century.”
While the timing is all coincidence, Fishburne, who stars in TV’s “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” said the play’s inspiring history from Marshall’s legal mind will remind people of the Supreme Court’s role in shaping the country.
“How does the Supreme Court function best now? That’s I think the big question,” Fishburne said in an interview with the AP. “It did function well when Brown was announced. It was a unanimous decision.”
