Thurgood at the PPT

Last night, a few other local Pittsburgh bloggers and I got to see the PPT's production of Thurgood playing at the O'Reilly dahn-tahn.  A good play, a good performance by Montae Russell, a good evening all the way round.

The play itself was written by George Stevens, Jr. and opened on Broadway in April of 2008 with Laurence Fishburne as Thurgood Marshall.  Earned the grown up Clean Miller a Tony nomination, by the way.

Told in the first person, this one-man bio relates many anecdotes of Marshall's life - including, of course, his interactions with some of the most important legal events of 20th century America.  Brown v Board of Education ranks high in those events.

In the rare event that you didn't know (or have been living under a rock for the past 6 decades or you get your news entirely from Fox News), that was the case where the Supreme Court unanimously declared that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." Plessy and educational segregation was ended.

I was curious to see how the decision played out in the local press at the time - what did the Post-Gazette have to say about it?  The Pittsburgh Press?  Luckily, the Google News Archive gives us access to both.

On May 18th, 1954, the editorial board of the Editorial Board of the Post-Gazette editorialized in favor of the ruling:


And published this editorial cartoon a day later (May 19, 1954):


One really can't fault Cy Hungerford for being a man of his time (I am sure he was a great guy and he obviously thought the end of school segregation was a good thing) but there's something mildly offensive to me about about the whole imagery.  Seems a bit patronizing - with a little more than a hint of racial caricature in how the two kids were drawn.  To my eyes, at least.

On the other hand, I'm looking in from more than five decades later - how was Cy to see that I'd be put off by his cartoon 59 years later?

The Press was similarly pleased (with a caveat of sorts) with the decision:


And the caveat?  This paragraph:

Extremists of both races?  I know what white extremism looked like on that then - this is from the front page of the Press from that very day:

What would the opposite analog be?  What was the extremism opposing segregation looking like back then?  How many troops?

59 years since Brown is a long time, to be sure.

Thurgood

Last month at the PPT it was 1776.  This month it's a play called Thurgood.

From the Public Theater's website:

In 1967, Thurgood Marshall became our first African-American Supreme Court Justice. In this exuberant one-man play we hear Thurgood’s story in his own words – from humble beginnings as a waiter in Baltimore, to behind the scenes with leaders such as General MacArthur, Robert Kennedy and President Lyndon Johnson, to his triumphant rise to the highest court in the land. A journey of epic proportions, Thurgood is an eye-opening, humorous, and uplifting portrait of a true American hero.

The show opened a few days ago and will run until April 7th.  It's already attracting some local attention.

From the Trib:

In theater, whether it's telling a joke or producing a play, timing is often the key to success.

And:

[PPT Director Ted] Pappas wanted to include the play in the season because: “It's a subject that matters enormously to me and should matter to others,” Pappas says.

What Pappas couldn't have anticipated was that “Thurgood” would arrive at the O'Reilly Theater stage while the Supreme Court was pondering arguments about whether some protections for racial minorities covered by the 1965 Voting Rights Act were still necessary.

Specifically, the discussion is about Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act and Justice Antonin Scalia's assertion that the protections afforded by that section are something of an unecessary "entitlement" that Congress is not likely to vote down.  From the transcript:

And this last enactment, not a single vote in the Senate against it. And the House is pretty much the same. Now, I don't think that's attributable to the fact that it is so much clearer now that we need this. I think it is attributable, very likely attributable, to a phenomenon that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement. It's been written about. Whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal political processes.

I don't think there is anything to be gained by any Senator to vote against continuation of this act. And I am fairly confident it will be reenacted in perpetuity unless -- unless a court can say it does not comport with the Constitution.

The discussion continues, I guess.