Thurgood Marshall: Activist, judge and the story of his quest for racial justice in America

The first African American to sit on the highest court is the subject of a film that retells his relentless and epochal quest to achieve racial justice in America

by Tom McCarthy

By the time the US supreme court banned the death penalty in cases of adult rape, in 1977, Thurgood Marshall had been a justice on the court for 10 years. He wrote a brief concurrence in the case, Coker v Georgia, citing his opposition to the death penalty, which then as now disproportionately targeted African American men.

Marshall’s experience with capital rape cases, and specifically with cases of black men accused of raping white women, was uniquely deep. For while the later decades of his career found Marshall enrobed as the country’s first African American supreme court justice, in his early years he had virtually lived from a suitcase, crossing the country as an activist lawyer known for defending innocent black men from a system of white justice that craved their freedom and their blood.

Of the 455 men executed for rape between 1930 and 1972, 405 were African American, Marshall had noted in a separate court decision. Were it not for him, the number would have been even higher.

As a lead lawyer for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), beginning in the late 1930s, Marshall would leave his home in Harlem, get a train from Pennsylvania Station and ride for days into hostile territory:Oklahoma, Florida, Texas, Tennessee. His calling – and the NAACP was flooded with calls – was to defend against criminal charges and to represent plaintiffs in segregation, equal pay and voting rights cases.

In some criminal cases, Marshall might be able to win a life sentence instead of execution. In rare cases, he might win a not-guilty verdict. By the late 1940s, he was logging an estimated 50,000 miles a year, according to Gilbert King, whose Pulitzer-winning Devil in the Grove tells the story of Marshall’s defense of an infamous 1948 Florida rape case.

“The places he was going were places where there weren’t any other lawyers who were going to do this work,” said Kenneth W. Mack, a Harvard Law School professor who wrote Representing the Race: the Creation of the Civil Rights Lawyer. “They were also places where almost nobody had ever seen a black lawyer before. And he had to do things like challenge the local practices of segregation, come into a courtroom, call white people as witnesses, cross-examine them.

“He had to do things that, if he did them outside of court, it would have gotten him killed.”

As a pantheonic civil rights figure, Marshall is best remembered for arguing Brown v Board of Education (1954), which struck a decisive blow against racial segregation in public schools, and for his later, historic ascent to the bench itself. Those towering achievements have mostly obscured his dramatic early years.

But the popular portrait of Marshall may be about to shift, with the release next week of a new film, Marshall, which tells the story of a salacious 1941 rape case in high-society Connecticut and of Marshall’s intervention at age 32 on behalf of the defendant, a butler-chauffeur named Joseph Spell.

While Hollywood has taken cracks at supreme court biopics before, going back to Oliver Wendell Holmes in The Magnificent Yankee (1950), Marshall promises a more visceral excitement. The film unites the producer of Django Unchained (Reginald Hudlin, directing this time) with the star of the upcoming Black Panther Marvel Comics blockbuster (Chadwick Boseman). In Marshall, the young lawyer who will become the old justice not only batters his intellectual inferiors in court – he also strikes the bar with a bat and throws punches in a bar.

“The thing about Thurgood Marshall is his whole life is incredible,” Hudlin said, in a phone interview. “What intrigued me was this figure of him as a young man – vital, dashing, with this swagger – very different from the mental picture that you may have of him. I think he’s one of the most underrated heroes in American history.”

Hudlin, the director of House Party, Boomerang and The Ladies Man, is good at superhero stories, with a series of Black Panther graphic novels to his credit and a comics-inspired movie, Shadowman, in the works. But to hear historians tell it, his portrayal of Marshall as a kind of peerless crusader, striding the planet to achieve racial justice and salvage the soul of the nation, is more or less true-to-life.

“There’s nobody like Marshall,” said Mack. “If you needed a lawyer and you were being railroaded, he is often your last and only resort. And what he did took an incredible amount of courage. In all those things I think the movie is accurate, and people ought to see it, because they ought to remember Marshall. And I think the movie does a great job of remembering and dramatizing that part of Marshall’s career and his importance.”

Daniel Sharfstein, a professor at Vanderbilt Law School who has written about the Spell case, said the only atypical element of it for Marshall was that he probably did not face a risk of being lynched in Connecticut, as he did when he traveled in the South.

“When Marshall had gone to Connecticut to help with the defense of Joseph Spell, one thing that his co-counsel would remember years later was a lunch that they had where Marshall says, ‘It’s just amazing to be in a place where I don’t have to fear for my life’,” Sharfstein said. “In so many of these places where Marshall went to defend an African American from all manner of unjust criminal charges, his life was in danger constantly.”

The Spell case was a tabloid bonanza. One night a couple of weeks before Christmas 1940, Eleanor Strubing, 33, of Greenwich, Connecticut, the daughter of an investment banker and wife of a Princeton-educated advertising executive, was found soaked and shivering on the side of a highway, near a reservoir in New York. Her chauffeur, Spell, had raped her repeatedly, she said, then driven her to the reservoir, thrown her in and stoned her.

Police claimed that Spell, 31, confessed to raping Strubing after a 16-hour interrogation. Spell told Marshall and his local co-counsel, Samuel Friedman, that he had admitted to having consensual sex with Strubing in the car, but not to rape. Then the pair had gone for a drive that ended when an agitated Strubing ran away from him, Spell said. There were no witnesses because Strubing’s husband was in Cincinnati, Ohio, on the night in question.

It was not a capital case but Spell faced 30 years in prison. Marshall advised him to decline a plea deal that would have required an admission of guilt. When the trial began in January 1941, pitting Friedman and Marshall against a prosecutor who described Spell as a “lust-mad Negro” who stalked his victim “like a panther”, the Bridgeport Herald branded it the “most sensational sex mystery in history”.

“With the Joseph Spell case, what’s amazing is it takes place in Connecticut,” said Sharfstein. “The prosecutor is the prosecutor for Greenwich, Connecticut. Yet when he opens his mouth to describe Spell to the jury, he engages in a level of race-baiting that could easily have taken place in Mississippi.

“And I think the Joseph Spell case – in many ways it’s a footnote in the history of NAACP’s struggle against segregation. But I think it’s a case that shows just how much the north was also governed by the logic of Jim Crow.”

Hudlin said: “This is a classic tabloid case. There’s sex, there’s violence, there’s all this racial tension. There’s all the things that make TMZ and the whole tabloid culture that we’re currently in a success. That same culture existed in the 1940s. Everything about the movie resonates with our culture today.”

During the trial Marshall sat to one side, listening to his white colleague speak to the all-white jury, the same way he would listen more than 35 years later to lawyers trying to convince him and his fellow supreme court justices about rape and the death penalty. The stakes in Connecticut were high, but for once they were not life-and-death.

“I don’t use words like ‘superhero’,” said Mack. “But when I say he’s extraordinary, I include his intelligence, his sense of strategy, and his talent as just a brilliant trial lawyer.

“And it took a lot of courage. There was an ever-present threat of violence, by southern sheriffs or by white vigilantes. It wasn’t just the cases, it was also the travel, the things he had to do, the constant negotiation of Jim Crow and what could you say and not say, and what could you do and not do. And saying or doing the wrong thing could get you killed.

“In that sense Marshall really is extraordinary. It took an extraordinary amount of courage to do what he did.”

The Party’s Just Getting Started: An Interview with Filmmaker Reginald Hudlin

Filmmaker Reginald Hudlin says his latest movie, “Marshall,” exemplifies two of the best aspects of what good films do: Bringing people together and starting conversations. (Photo Credit: Ingrid C. Hertfelder)

By Sonya Alexander – September 26, 2017

It’s important to have a clear vision if you want to be a filmmaker who has staying power in Hollywood. Veteran African-American filmmaker Reginald Hudlin’s passion for movies and crystal clear focus have cemented him as a perennial key player in the film and television industries. With hits like “House Party,” “Boomerang” and “The Boondocks,” he maintains a finger on the pulse of what’s culturally relevant at any given time.

His latest film, “Marshall,” about Supreme Court judge Thurgood Marshall, opens on October 13 and stars Chadwick Boseman. Reginald recently took the time to speak with Atlanta Black Star about the film, as well as his career.

Atlanta Black Star: You’re from Illinois originally?

Reginald Hudlin: East St. Louis

ABS: How do you think your roots affect your vision as a filmmaker?

RH: That affects everything for me. At the end of the day, I make movies thinking about my friends and family back home. In the Midwest, people aren’t easily impressed. I remember going back home after making my first movie, “House Party.” We’d won awards at Sundance and had all this buzz. Then, I talked to one of my cousins and he said, “Oh yeah, I saw your movie. It was pretty good.” [laughs] At home, “pretty good” is a pretty nice compliment!

ABS: Speaking about “House Party,” how did the story come together and how did you take it from a short to a feature?

RH: I was showing it at different film festivals, and an executive from New Line Cinemas saw it and said, “Hey, let’s make a movie.” I had already written a feature film script version of it. Also, it was at the beginning of the explosion of black cinema. “She’s Gotta Have it” had come out. … There was an appetite for who might be next.

ABS: What was the budget on the film?

RH: $2.5 million.

ABS: When did you first know you wanted to get into film?

RH: When I was a kid. We are a big movie-going household. I would see movies I loved and say, “I want to make movies like that, but with people who look like me.”

ABS: What would you say are your top five favorite films? Any genres.

RH: That’s kind of brutal. (laughs) I’m going to hop around a little bit. I really love “Black Orpheus,” which is a film from Brazil. Then, I really love the first “Avengers” movie. I’ve watched that many, many times. It’s an incredible movie, I really love it. There’s a comedy from the 1940s called “His Girl Friday.”

ABS: Cary Grant, right?

RH: Yes, Cary Grant. Rosalind Russell. I’ve seen that movie a lot. I think that’s a pretty amazing movie.

ABS: Great writing.

RH: I took my daughter to go see “Singing in the Rain.” It took a lot of convincing to get her to go see it. We saw it at the Academy, on the big screen. I said, “Look, you’re studying ballet, you need to see this movie.” It blew her away. There was this great scene. … You just walk away saying it’s a really perfect movie.

ABS: That’s four films. What’s your fifth?

RH: I should name a foreign film. There’s a kind of obscure film called “Memories from Underdevelopment” from Cuba. I really love that movie. That’s my five.

ABS: All pretty interesting.

RH: They’re all very different. I could keep naming them! [laugh]) On my website, I have these lists like, here are forty perfect albums, here are the ten best musicals. If people want to see things I like, they can go on hudlinentertainment.com and I’ve got a lot of lists.

ABS: Would you say there are any filmmakers who have influenced your style?

RH: Oh, yes! So many. I really like filmmakers who are versatile, who can change up their styles. I really like Norman Jewison. He did “In the Heat of the Night,” then he turned around and did “Jesus Christ Superstar.” Those are two great movies. It’s really hard to have that kind of career today, where you can go into those different kinds of styles. Those are two movies that made a big impression on me.
For “Jesus Christ Superstar,” I went to Catholic school growing up. It was a really good education, but I felt there were contradictions in what I was being taught in terms of the theological philosophy. “Jesus Christ Superstar” scraped away…it got back to the fundamental ideas that Jesus taught, made them relatable to a young person and I really appreciated that. And with a movie like “In the Heat of the Night,” if for nothing else, that scene when Sidney Poitier slaps the hell out of that old racist man. I mean, come on! What’s better than that moment, that’s the slap heard around the world!

ABS: You went to Catholic school. Did that shape your vision as a filmmaker at all?

RH: Yeah. East St. Louis is an all-black town, but I went to a school that was integrated. I think that’s good. In this world, you have to deal with all kinds of people. And, particularly, when you go to Hollywood, you have to be tolerant of other people while you’re asking others to be tolerant of you. Learning that at an early age was very important.

ABS: Which do you prefer, writing, directing, or producing, and why?

RH: I guess my favorite thing is directing, but, truthfully, I see them all as kind of one thing. Even if I’m working with someone else’s script, I’ll work with the writer to help shape it. And, producing, to me, is just an extension of what I’m doing as a director which is why, often, if I’m directing a movie, I’m a producer on it as well, because you have to manage the whole equation in your head. You have to understand all the parts to get the vision across the way you wanted to.

ABS: How did you get involved with “Django Unchained”?

RH: I was invited by Quentin Tarantino. We were friends and we were hanging out at a party and we started talking about movies about slavery. I mentioned how I really dislike most of them, with the exception of “Spartacus.” I thought that was a great movie about slavery because the slaves had a revolt. Years later he said, “Hey, I have a new script. Why don’t you come by and read it?” I read it and loved it.

ABS: When you direct, is there any particular camera you like to use?

RH: When I first started, it was still the 16mm era, going to 35. Now we’re into digital. I just feel like, you work with the technology of the moment and you can make something great with anything. You can make a great movie on your iPhone. Sure, you want to make the most beautiful images possible, but I think you can tell a story or make something beautiful in any medium with any device.

ABS: What kind of changes, for better or worse, have you seen in the industry since you first started?

RH: There’s an obvious shift in technology where you can stream movies anywhere, anytime. That dominates both film and television. The fact that people can see movies over and over again — or anywhere — that could be a huge advance, certainly for black filmmakers. People can access movies they may have been curious about but didn’t go to the movies [and see]. And they can have real data and say, “You know what, this person is a star and these movies are popular,” because you don’t have a few cultural gatekeepers making decisions. There’s a smorgasbord available to the audience, and I think that’s important.

ABS: What actors would you like to work with that you haven’t?

RH: I’ve been so fortunate to work with so many amazing actors. I think we’re in a great era where there’s a great new generation of stars popping up. Just the cast of this movie alone was amazing. To work with Chadwick Boseman, Josh Gad, Sterling Brown, Kate Hudson — these are all amazing actors, and I can’t wait to work with them all again.

ABS: That’s a nice segue to my next question. How did “Marshall” come together?

RH: Paula Wagner, who’s a producer I’ve known for many years — we were on the UCLA Film School Board together — she called and said, “Hey, I’ve got a script about Thurgood Marshall.” And I said, “Yes! I should read it, but I’m in!” I’ve always wanted to make a movie about Thurgood Marshall. Fortunately, it came my way. It was such a great script, such a refreshingly different take because it’s not a cradle-to-grave biopic. It’s not telling his whole life story. It’s one case, a case that most people don’t know about, so you don’t know the ending. The nature of the case is very relevant to today. I thought the circumstances of the trial were the same kind of challenges that we face today in dealing with the justice system. I thought it was a movie from the past that was very relevant to today’s audiences.

ABS: How did you choose Chadwick?

RH: We had met not long before. He had just gotten the role of Black Panther and I had been the writer of the Black Panther comic book for many years, so we just started talking naturally about Black Panther and we just kind of hit it off. I knew I was very excited about the idea of working with him. So, when this script came up I knew he would do a spectacular job, which he did.

ABS: What message are you trying to convey with the film?

RH: The movie has a lot of big ideas in it, but I think ultimately it’s about allies. If we stand up for something and link arms, we can overcome these incredible obstacles. We’re at a time when our country is literally being torn apart, and you can really lose hope. You can say, “Oh, my God. How are we going to fight for justice, for a fair system?” But, we’ve done it before and we can do it again.

ABS: Why do you think film is important?

RH: It’s a manifestation of our culture’s desires, aspirations, fear. It’s a collective experience. We all gather in a movie theater and we cry together, we cheer together, we laugh together. Then, if the movie really works, we talk about it. That’s what’s been so great about “Marshall,” because at every screening, I don’t care who’s in the audience — young, old, black, white, male, female — they have those same range of emotions and everyone has a great time talking afterwards. And that’s what I feel a movie at its best does, it brings us together. We don’t have to agree on everything, but we’re engaged and we’re involved, not just on an intellectual level, on an emotional level.

ABS: Besides “Marshall,” what else do you have coming out?

RH: We’re working on a revival of “Showtime at the Apollo” for Fox, and that will be launching next year. Pretty excited about that as well.

ABS: What is your writing process?

RH: If I’m writing myself, it’s just an idea I have, I start making notes to get things percolating. If I’m working with writers … In the case of this movie, there are two fantastic writers. It’s more of a case of sitting down with them and talking about my first impressions. I think first impressions are very important because the audience sees it for a first time. They don’t get to see it five or six times. We talk about what I loved from the very first time, where it didn’t work, then we start talking about it. If I was just going to the movies to see a movie about this, what would I really, really want to see? We’re in the dream factory, so we have to make dreams come true.

If you want to see the movie, mingle with celebs and support a great cause, here you go!

Tom Ortenberg – Benefiting ACLU of Southern California

Reginald Hudlin’s biopic starring Chadwick Boseman makes its debut on the big screen — and you’re invited. See the film and then join the cast and crew at the invite-only after-party.

The Experience

East St. Louis native Reginald Hudlin’s new film sheds light on long history of systemic racism

Josh Gad, Chadwick Boseman and Sterling K. Brown in a scene from the film “Marshall.”

By Kenya Vaughn Sep 21, 2017 Updated Sep 26, 2017

When director, producer, filmmaker and East St. Louis native Reginald Hudlin called The American on Friday to talk about his upcoming film “Marshall,” protests were underway in downtown St. Louis. Earlier that morning, Judge Timothy Wilson handed down a not guilty verdict in the murder trial of former St. Louis Police officer Jason Stockley for the 2011 shooting death of Anthony Lamar Smith.

“I know things are bananas at home right now,” Hudlin said. “I’m hoping movies like this create a better consciousness about actions like that. When you see the specifics of how institutional racism works, I think that changes people.”

The film, which Hudlin directs, opens in theatres nationwide on October 13. “Marshall” centers around a 1941 case where a black driver is accused of raping his wealthy white employer’s wife. A young Thurgood Marshall – who was 32 at the time, but had already argued before the United States Supreme Court – was sent to Connecticut to work on the case by the NAACP. The judge would not allow him to represent the accused. Marshall is forced to team up with a Jewish lawyer with zero experience with criminal trials, and be silent in the courtroom as the case is presented.

“This was a really crucial case as far as forming his career,” Hudlin said about the story that unfolds over the course of the film. “I’ve been playing the film to audiences for the past month and people have left theatre saying, ‘I didn’t know about this part of his life – or about who he really was as a person,’ because the film captures the spirit of the type of person he was.”

Before he became the first African-American U.S. Supreme Court Judge, even before he argued the landmark Brown vs. The Board of Education case, Marshall was a gifted and hungry attorney that fought for change in a system built with the odds stacked against people of color.

Hudlin has always felt that Marshall was an underrated hero in Black History when it comes to other giants like Harriet Tubman, Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.

“He played such a crucial role in America fulfilling its promise,” Hudlin said. “Basically, you’ve got the Constitution, which has all of these great ideas, but is flawed from the beginning because of the presence of slaveholders and racism. What he did was take that and say, ‘Okay, this is the promise of the country. I’m going to take these words and make you live up to them.’”

His regard for Marshall had everything to do with Hudlin signing on to direct the film when he was approached by producer Paula Wagner.

“She called me and said, ‘I have a movie about Thurgood Marshall. I was like ‘I’m in,’ Hudlin said. “I was like, ‘I should read this first, but yes I would love to do that.’

The film stars Chadwick Boseman, Kate Hudson, Josh Gad and St. Louis native Sterling K. Brown.

“I teased him a little bit for being from St. Louis as opposed to East St. Louis,” Hudlin said. “We had a lot of fun. Sterling’s an amazing person. He’s so talented, so smart and so charming that you just want to be around him. I felt that from the moment I met him and it was just an absolute joy working with him – and I can’t wait to do it again.”

While it is certainly a big deal to have a director from East St. Louis and a co-star from St. Louis, Hudlin says that the region shouldn’t be surprised, because of the rich legacy in arts and entertainment.

“St. Louis and East St. Louis – the entire area has generated so many talented stars,” Hudlin said. “I grew up two doors down from where Ike met Tina. And about 10 blocks from my house was the night club where Chuck Berry created Rock and Roll. Miles Davis’ mother taught third grade at my elementary school. The truth is that we were surrounded by greatness. We have always made a tremendous contribution.”

As far as “Marshall,” Hudlin says the film’s message falls directly in line with what is happening as people protest their outrage with the Stockley verdict and attempt to hold the system accountable with their demonstrations.

“We see it right now in the streets of St. Louis,” Hudlin said. “If we stand side by side with our allies – right minded people who may not look like us, or may not start from the same place as us –if you link arms and work together, you can overcome unbelievable obstacles.”

“Marshall” opens in theaters nationwide on Friday, October 13. The film is rated PG-13 with a running time of 118 minutes.