Statue stands for equality Justice: The lifetime achievements of Thurgood Marshall are daunting, but his memorial at the State House isn't.

Already, it had become part of the landscape.

Although only one day old, the memorial to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall drew a steady flow of people yesterday to its spot north of the State House in Annapolis.

The statue had its day of celebrity with television crews and speeches earlier in the week, but the constant attention from the workaday world that followed yesterday promised to give it more lasting meaning.

"Marshall is someone I will always look up to," said Beryl Gardner, 27, a law clerk who visited the memorial on her lunch hour. "He is the future."

The statue has been heralded by black leaders as one of the most prominently displayed memorials to an African-American at any state house in the country, recognizing Marshall's role as a national leader in civil rights. But for Marylanders, it tells a local story about a Baltimorean who started at the city branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and went on to become the first black justice of the Supreme Court.

The achievements are daunting, but the statue isn't. Marshall stands on a low circular pedestal. He is not wearing a justice's robes, not sitting on an ornate chair, not towering like an untouchable giant.

Instead, he is depicted as a young man carrying a worn legal folder, with his right hand in his pocket and one foot forward, a breeze blowing his overcoat and ordinary workingman's suit slightly out of place.

The statue is posed so that the civil rights lawyer appears to be striding out of the former Court of Appeals building, scene of some of his most famous triumphs. The sight stopped the rush of passers-by.

A 2-year-old girl asked, "Who's that?" and reached at the statue's bronzed coattails. A grandmother stared into its face. A teacher read its inscriptions. A lobbyist used it in conversation to prove a point about equality.

At the statue's emotional unveiling ceremony Tuesday, Marshall's widow, Cecilia, said her husband would have wanted to share the honor with the "countless number of unsung heroes" who advanced the cause of civil rights.

Some of those heroes also are celebrated at the memorial, which features three small bronze statues of the students who helped Marshall win his desegregation battles. The family of one of those students, Donald Murray, stood in the crowd Tuesday.

"I'm particularly proud that Thurgood is getting this recognition. It's about time," said Murray's widow, Rosa. Marshall represented Donald Murray in a high-profile case that struck down the University of Maryland's policy of excluding blacks from its law school.

The arrival of the Marshall statue puts an infamous monument in the background. On the south side of the State House grounds, just more than 300 steps from Marshall's statue, stands a memorial to a man who helped make slavery the way of the land.

The statue depicts Marylander Roger B. Taney, the U.S. Supreme Court chief justice who in 1857 wrote the Dred Scott decision that slaves could not be freed by entering a free state, ZTC Congress could not outlaw slavery in new territories and blacks could not be citizens.

Yesterday, the Taney statue stared south on an empty green, too tall to touch. No one stopped to read the inscription, and two benches, facing the street, were empty.

When the idea of a Marshall monument was gathering momentum, some black leaders wanted to move the one honoring Taney. But legislators such as Del. Howard "Pete" Rawlings, a Baltimore Democrat, said both statues offer a symbol of how far Maryland has come in the fight for equal rights.

Marshall died three years ago at the age of 84. He had served on the court from 1967 to 1991. Visiting the memorial yesterday were politicians and black leaders who wanted to honor his memory -- and praise the man who helped remove the barriers to their own success.

After only one day, the statue already had witnessed a first for blacks. As Robert M. Bell walked into the State House to be sworn in as chief judge of the Court of Appeals -- a first for a black Marylander -- he stopped by the statue and paused for a moment in its shadow.

The statue attracted many other people who were not setting firsts, but just remembering a man whom they respected. Retired law professor Walter J. Leonard said he will cherish a brief encounter with Marshall 46 years ago.

Leonard was a student at Howard University in 1950 and listened to every guest lecture Marshall delivered as counsel to the NAACP. He remembered Marshall telling a story about a man who had taunted him with racial epithets. Instead of arguing, Marshall went home and studied law, hoping one day to win a bigger fight.

"He told us he took his briefcase and he folded it up and he got out of there as quickly as he could," Leonard said. "He had a real sense of his own strength."

Marshall's lifetime achievements are inscribed in a ring of stone around the statue. Yesterday, people approached the edge of that stone ring with care.

"It's very beautiful," said Lois Stoner, a Montgomery County school official who was in Annapolis for a hearing. "I just feel like it's something I shouldn't walk on."

Pub Date: 10/24/96