LEWISTON – A noted writer and radio-TV journalist told a Bates College audience Thursday night what he has learned about Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall’s place in the legacy of the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education case.
“I’m going to ask that each and every one of you have a sense in your hearts of being inheritors of Thurgood Marshall’s mantle,” Juan Williams, a senior correspondent for National Public Radio and a regular on NPR’s “Morning Edition,” told a large crowd at the Bates College Chapel.
He emphasized “that each of us has an obligation to be a social engineer – not to be just a social parasite.”
Williams delivered the last address of a yearlong series of events at the college examining the legacy of the 1954 Supreme Court case outlawing segregation in public schools.
He used examples from his interviews with Marshall for the critically acclaimed biography “Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary” to show how the Supreme Court decision Marshall wrote was shaped by his life. Williams talked about Marshall’s middle-class youth in Baltimore, his party-loving college years, and then his realization through contact with famed poet Langston Hughes of a social conscience.
Stories of Marshall’s early naivet were used to explain his eventual understanding of racial inequality in America, as well as Williams’ conclusion that Marshall felt to the end of his life that his contributions were under-appreciated.
Williams said, “Most Americans have written off big city public schools as warehouses where kids are stored until they are 18. I think it’s the greatest sin of our generation.”
He said public schools are no longer motherhood and apple pie.
“You can take on the American educational establishment. You can say that public schools are failing. The notion of full and total support of public schools has been eviscerated to the point where even the president can stand up and be an opponent.
“That is a sea change in the American mind,” he said, adding “it is the living aftermath of Brown (vs. the Board of Education).”
Williams wrote the nonfiction bestseller “Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965,” which is the companion volume to the critically acclaimed television series.
Williams is also the author of “This Far by Faith: Stories from the African American Religious Experience,” which appeared in February 2003. During his 21-year career at The Washington Post, Williams served as an editorial writer, op-ed columnist, and White House reporter. He has won an Emmy award for TV documentary writing. He continues to be a political analyst for the Fox News Channel and a regular panelist on “Fox News Sunday.”
His appearance was sponsored by the law firm of Skelton, Taintor and Abbot; the Harward Center for Community Partnership at Bates College; and the College Lectures Committee.
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