TheLoop21.com

By: Susan Anderson (follow this member)
Mon, 07/06/2009 - 15:07

As we wind down from this year’s July 4 holiday, I am thinking about a 20th century speech that shocked America, because it posed questions about the nation’s founding in equality and slavery.

It isn’t just Independence Day that brings the speech to mind; it’s also the new play, Thurgood, about Thurgood Marshall, starring Laurence Fishburne (pictured), that has traveled from Broadway to Los Angeles this summer.

Marshall was the first African American to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, from 1967 until 1991. That position came after an extraordinary career as a lawyer and chief counsel to the NAACP, leading the assault against the legal architecture of racial segregation. His most famous case was Brown v. the Board of Education, which outlawed “separate but equal” public accommodations.

I haven’t yet seen the play by George Stevens, Jr., so I don’t know if it covers the 1987 speech by Marshall in 1987 – on the occasion of the bicentennial of the United States Constitution.

But back then, the speech made headlines.

While others waved the flag and praised the U.S. Constitution, Marshall struck a critical tone. “Nor do I find the wisdom, foresight, and sense of justice exhibited by the Framers particularly profound," he said. "To the contrary, the government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and momentous social transformation to attain the system of constitutional government, and its respect for the individual freedoms and human rights, we hold as fundamental today.”

The speech was controversial during its day. But its lasting value was demonstrated by its inclusion in the recently published American Heritage Book of Great American Speeches for Young People.

Thurgood Marshall was born 13 years after Frederick Douglass died. Like Douglass’ 1852 address, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?,” Marshall’s bicentennial speech reminded Americans that freedom didn’t begin at the founding of America.

I, for one, plan to attend the play to learn more about how, as the star of the play, Fishburne, put it, Marshall "used the law as his weapon, and he really changed the way things are."

Susan D. Anderson teaches, speaks and writes about African American history, politics and culture. She is the author of Nostalgia for a Trumpet: Poems of Memory and History, published by Northwestern University Press. She has been a Visiting Professor at Pitzer College, a contributor to the Los Angeles Times Sunday Opinion since 1999, and currently manages an archival program at the USC Libraries.