Updated Wednesday morning, October 21, 2020. Originally posted Saturday morning, October 17, 2020.
Thurgood Marshall, second row, second from right, with fellow Alpha Phi Alpha pledges at Lincoln University, 1926. Photo courtesy of the Langston Hughes Memorial Library Special Collections and Archives, the Lincoln University of Pennsylvania, via Daily Local News.
Growing up in Baltimore in the 1910s and 20s, Thurgood Marshall was known more for his boisterous personality than for his smarts, of which of course he had plenty. He was a practical joker, a loudmouth, a showoff, by his own account a roughneck, and a rover, at least within the confines of the parts of town young black men were allowed to rove. He was also industrious, reliable, responsible, and ambitious. He was studious, he read everything, and he loved to debate. He got good grades, but it was his argumentativeness and his gift of gab and the enjoyment he took in being the center of attention rather than his underlying intelligence that classmates and teachers tended to focus on, taking his keenness of mind for granted. He went away to college at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, where, Wil Haygood writes in "Showdown":
[His] booming laugh on the Lincoln campus signaled his presence from around corners. His pranks were ribald; he became an expert in the art of tossing water balloons at the unsuspecting. He had a cool demeanor in the face of imminent exams---"do good enough to pass" is how he humbly put it---and came away with grades good enough to make honor roll lists. He became the envy of others.
He went on to Howard University Law School and graduated from there cum laude. Still, it’s hard to change how the people who knew you when you were a teenager see you. But...
Marshall was proud of himself and the approaching end to his law school studies. Some folks back in his Baltimore neighborhood seemed surprised to hear from his parents that he had done so well in law school. “I’d got the horsin’ around out of my system. And I’d heard how law books were to dig in,” he would say. “So I dug, way deep.”
---from “Showdown” by Wil Haygood.
Previously: “Even the singing cowboys”.
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