Justice Marshall

If there be such things as ghosts, then Justice Thurgood Marshall's angry spirit must have stalked the Supreme Court's marble corridors last week. He died on Sunday. The next morning, in an ironic twist of timing, the Court announced yet another ruling which will expedite the death penalty in America.Justice Marshall would have hurled a thundering dissent at the decision. He abhorred the death penalty as an abomination -- immoral in principle, discriminatory in practice, unconstitutional in law. Before his retirement in 1991, he had battled against it for 24 years on the Supreme Court.

Schaefer wrong about Marshall statue ceremony Maryland Comptroller William Donald Schaefer misstated history while expressing his opposition to renaming Baltimore-Washington International Airport in honor of Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Mr. Schaefer claimed that Justice Marshall "didn't want to come to the dedication of his statue on Pratt Street" ("Final approval given to adding Marshall name to BWI," Sept. 1). I remember that ceremony, and the comptroller is mistaken. Justice Marshall not only attended the May 1980 ceremony outside the federal courthouse downtown but he also spoke.

In his later years, Justice Thurgood Marshall gained a reputation as something of a curmudgeon. He could, for example, be scathing in his assessment of the movers and shakers of his time: He once called Robert F. Kennedy "a cold, calculating character" and thought the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. "wasn't worth diddly squat" as an organizer, according to taped interviews recorded in 1977.But what others viewed as inveterate grouchiness, Marshall himself put down to his preference for plain speaking.

In a ceremony filled with song and tributes, the state's top leaders renamed Baltimore-Washington International Airport yesterday for civil rights legend Thurgood Marshall, the nation's first African-American Supreme Court justice. Speaking from her wheelchair in front of the statue of Marshall at the State House, Dorothy Height, the longtime head of the National Council of Negro Women, said Marshall's courage, optimism and perseverance were an inspiration to her and the other great leaders of the civil rights movement.

Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall is coming home to Baltimore -- to sit as a judge in the city where he was born and raised and where he began his legal career six decades ago.Justice Marshall will hear appeals court arguments in the Edward A. Garmatz federal courthouse during the week of Oct. 26, said Thomas Schrinel, deputy executive of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.Justice Marshall returned to the bench in New York City in January to listen to arguments before the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Sun incorrectly reported yesterday that former U.S. Representative Parren J. Mitchell became the first black graduate of the University of Maryland's School of Social Work, because of a court decision striking down a discriminatory admissions policy. In fact, Mr. Mitchell was the first black to attend graduate school at the University of Maryland at College Park, where he received a master's degree in sociology in 1952. The dean of the School of Social Work said yesterday that his school never had a policy of discrimination.

Douglass High School yesterday paid tribute to Thurgood Marshall, a member of the class of 1925 who became one of great legal minds in the battle against segregation and eventually rose to a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.During the tribute, Shirley Hill, principal of the West Baltimore school, described Mr. Marshall as a mischievious student who was forced to read the U.S. Constitution as punishment for his misdeeds. Some historians say the punishment sparked Mr. Marshall's love for the law.Mr.

Thurgood Marshall, the indefatigable legal champion of America's mid-century civil rights movement, who became the first black person to serve on the Supreme Court, died yesterday of heart failure.Justice Marshall, who had been in poor health for the past several years, died at 2 p.m. at Bethesda Naval Medical Center, according to Toni House, Supreme Court spokeswoman. He was 84."He was a giant in the quest for human rights and equal opportunity in the whole history of our country," President Clinton said of the Baltimore native.

ANNAPOLIS -- The much-maligned statue of Roger B. Taney, who as chief justice of the United States set back the progress of the country's blacks, was appreciated yesterday even by its detractors.After the unveiling of the winning model in a $100,000 competition for the Thurgood Marshall memorial in State House ceremonies, several officials commented on the importance to history of keeping the Taney statue.By next October, when the Marshall monument is dedicated on the northwest side of the State House, the Taney statue -- resting a couple of hundred yards away on the opposite side of the State House -- will become a necessary bookend of history, several people present yesterday said.

The late Thurgood Marshall is best known as a champion of the civil rights movement. What isn't as well known, though, is that Justice Marshall also was a stalwart of the environmental movement that grew up during his 24 years on the U.S. Supreme Court.That is the conclusion of Robert Percival, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law who spent two months last summer poring through Thurgood Marshall's papers at the Library of Congress. The papers were made public last year, providing law professors, historians and reporters with an unusually detailed view of the inner workings of the court.

When Gov. Marvin Mandel of Maryland signed the 1973 order that changed the name of the state's largest airport to Baltimore-Washington International, the order stated that the former name, Friendship International Airport, did "not communicate the location of this fine facility to travelers in other parts of the nation and world." More than 30 years later, that is still the concern of state business, marketing and aviation experts, who are uncertain about the proposal in the legislature to rename the airport for the late Supreme Court justice from Baltimore, Thurgood Marshall.

FIFTY YEARS later, the landscape of American race relations looks so radically different that it is hard to remember what the nation looked like before the Supreme Court's decision in Brown vs. Board of Education. But in 2004, an increasing number of people are openly asking whether Brown failed, because public schools remain so highly segregated 50 years later. This is a dangerous argument. The Brown case was never only about schools. It was the leading edge of a fight against racial segregation in all of American life.

The man answering the door at 1632 Division St. is not pleased. Just moments earlier he was enjoying his afternoon meal. Now someone is on his steps, asking questions about the plaque that says Thurgood Marshall lived here."

This is an edited excerpt of a talk given by journalist Juan Williams at the Baltimore Book Festival on Sunday. Mr. Williams is author of "Thurgood Marshall -- American Revolutionary," a new biography of the late Supreme Court justice.BALTIMORE gave Thurgood Marshall his lifelong vision of racial equality because black people in Baltimore, even at the turn of the century, had a great deal of political power. Also, they had the right to go to school, to serve on juries.Both of Thurgood Marshall's grandfathers were large players in the black community here.

Free speech in P.G. County?As a former teacher in the Prince George's County school system, I was absolutely appalled to read in The Sun that Kenneth Johnson, one of the members of the Prince George's County school board, took it upon himself to ''disinvite'' Associate Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court from speaking at the Thomas G. Pullen Creative and Performing Arts School in Landover.The explanation proffered by Mr. Johnson for this remarkable conduct -- ''There is nothing he has to say that I would want to hear'' -- is nothing short of chilling.

ANNAPOLIS -- The much-maligned statue of Roger B. Taney, who as chief justice of the United States set back the progress of the country's blacks, was appreciated yesterday even by its detractors.After the unveiling of the winning model in a $100,000 competition for the Thurgood Marshall memorial in State House ceremonies, several officials commented on the importance to history of keeping the Taney statue.By next October, when the Marshall monument is dedicated on the northwest side of the State House, the Taney statue -- resting a couple of hundred yards away on the opposite side of the State House -- will become a necessary bookend of history, several people present yesterday said.

AS LAW clerks to Justice Thurgood Marshall in his final two years at the Supreme Court, we are dismayed by the Library of Congress' indiscriminate release of Justice Marshall's court papers to the public. We are certain that his wishes have not been honored.In many separate conversations with us -- including during the fall of 1991, when Justice Marshall allegedly permitted full access to his papers upon his death -- Justice Marshall made clear how greatly he valued the confidentiality of the court's deliberations and that he had no intention of violating that ethic.

WASHINGTON -- Justice Thurgood Marshall, the only black ever to sit on the Supreme Court, retired yesterday after 24 years of stubborn and often eloquent liberalism on the nation's highest tribunal.A hero to the nation's blacks before he ever joined the court, as a seldom-defeated civil rights lawyer from the founding of the revolution this century to achieve black equality, Justice Marshall solidified his place in history by breaking the court's 178-year-old "for whites only" barrier.Although he had often said, more seriously than in jest, that he had a lifetime appointment and that he would "serve out my term," the justice told President Bush yesterday that his "advancing age and medical condition" forced his retirement now.He will be 83 on Tuesday.

The General Assembly's decision to install a statue of the late Justice Thurgood Marshall on the northwest side of the State House in Annapolis is splendid, appropriate and overdue.Allocating $100,000 for a statue design competition isn't so smart.No need exists for a new, costly competition for a Marshall statue, because a perfectly superb one already exists -- and is in dire need of proper placement.Baltimore's renowned and venerable sculptor Reuben Kramer labored mightily for several years on an exceptionally fine, 8-foot-7-inch-high bronze statue of Justice Marshall, for which the jurist returned to his hometown a number of times to pose.

An article in Tuesday's editions incorrectly stated the number of Marylanders who have served on the U.S. Supreme Court. There were five: Thomas Johnson (1791-1793); Samuel Chase (1796-1811); Gabriel Duvall (1811-1835); Roger Brooke Taney (1836-1864); and Thurgood Marshall (1967-1991).The Sun regrets the error.It is only a couple hundred yards from one side of Maryland's historic State House to the other, but lawmakers decided last night to make that short walk a measurement of the great distance blacks -- and the nation as a whole -- have come over the past 150 years.