On Stage, 'Thurgood' Continues To Resonate

In June 1991, at age 83, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall stepped down from the nation's highest court. At his retirement announcement, a reporter asked Marshall whether he thought Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous line, "Free at last, thank God almighty we are free at last," at last, rang true for him.

"Well, I'm not free," Marshall answered. "All I know is that years ago, when I was a youngster, a Pullman porter told me that he had been in every city in the country, he was sure. And he had never been in any city in the United States where he had to put a hand up in front of his face to find out he was a Negro. I agree with him."

At the beginning of the one-man play "Thurgood," this is the Thurgood Marshall we meet — the towering figure near the end of his life, after a quarter century on the Supreme Court, and quarter century as a history-making civil rights lawyer before that.

"Thurgood" is on stage at the New Repertory Theatre in Watertown through Feb. 11. 

Johnny Lee Davenport, actor.

George Stevens Jr., playwright, producer and author.