It was an emotional highlight of the 2023 General Assembly session.
Men and women of all ages and races were in tears as historians and legal experts recounted the early career of the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, and some of his successful — and heartbreakingly unsuccessful — battles to desegregate Maryland.
They were gathered for the unveiling of Marshall’s portrait in January outside the hearing room of the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee. Sen. William C. Smith Jr. (D-Montgomery), the panel’s chair, movingly described his desire to display a portrait of the young Marshall in the anteroom outside where the committee meets, because he wanted Marylanders of color to see someone who looked like them when they came to testify.
All the other portraits outside the hearing room are of important white people, one dating back to Maryland’s colonial era. The painter, Ernest Shaw, who, like Smith, is Black, was equally poignant as he discussed making the picture of Marshall as a young lawyer — and his desire not to let the civil rights icon down.
But the printed program for the unveiling showed another, less seemly side of Annapolis: The portrait was paid for in part by donations from lawyers, lobbyists, powerbrokers and other special interests that might have business before the Judicial Proceedings Committee or other legislative panels: Ballard Spahr LLP; Gallagher Evelin’s & Jones; Gordon Fineblatt LLC; Pica & Associates PA LLC; Mark Puente;...
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