Thurgood (TV) (7/10)

January 22nd, 2012

This, my friends, is how history should be taught. As enthralling as any high-octane thriller, as tense as any mystery and as frank as the most dazzling exposé documentary, Thurgood is simply Laurence Fishburne on stage for nearly two hours, talking. Just talking. Using the script written by the esteemed George Stevens, Jr, Fishburne lectures us as Thurgood Marshall, the first black Supreme Court judge in American history.

That’s it. Two hours of Thurgood Marshall, the poor boy from Baltimore who began his working career as a busboy on the railroads, who got the American Constitution hammered into him by his father, the boy who went to a segregated law school, the man who joined the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, the man who took on the Supreme courts – and won – over racial issues, the man who in essence wiped out America’s shameful recent past.

Fishburne is alone on stage, a huge all-white Old Glory behind him, taking us through these stages of Marshall’s life. He effortlessly recounts the prose, subtly changing from young buck to old man, telling us all about the life of a great man. Marshall’s weapon was the law. He needed nothing else. If the law ruled unfavourably against black Americans, he’d just use that decision to base his next case around. Take, for example, Plessy vs. Ferguson. The courts ruled that the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment had not been violated when Homer Adolph Plessy refused to vacate the seat he’d so cosily rested on in a whites-only railway car. Plessy was instructed to pay a fine, the courts saying that blacks should be treated as ‘separate, but equal’. Equality is a difficult thing to prove. In practice, as we know, equal meant anything but equality.

Plessy vs. Ferguson reared its head many, many years later. Marshall, by now a more senior lawyer for the NAACP, was called to argue Brown vs. Board of Education. Here, a black man was refused entry to the University of Maryland because of the colour of his skin. Marshall proved that first of all, the alternative schooling for Oliver Brown was indeed separate, but it wasn’t equal. Secondly, he asked whether this arcane ruling had any relevance when held up against the Fourteenth Amendment. It took some persuading, but he won. Southern states didn’t go quietly, even with a Supreme Court ruling telling them to do so, and so Marshall’s work schedule just got bigger and bigger.

All this and more is told with great wit and eloquence, Fishburne holding everyone’s attention with a Tony-nominated performance. Marshall’s personal life is mentioned, giving us all a breather with some charming little bon mots concerning the judge’s love life and lifelong romance with the bottle. These little off-course rambles add to the personal nature of the soliloquy, Fishburne pausing only to milk a few jokes or to replenish his water glass. Multi-award winning writer George Stevens, Jr weaves the assorted memories together with great flair, and the result is riveting.

Broadcast on HBO and available now on DVD, Thurgood is an absolutely wonderful watch. Entertaining and informative in equal measure, it highlights both a supreme storytelling performance from an actor at the top of his game, but more importantly the incredibly story of a remarkable man. The Supreme Court judge died in 1993 aged 84. No one in modern American times, it could be said, did more for his fellow man than Thurgood Marshall.