Free Thurgood Marshall by Juan Williams

this household the women often eclipsed the men, much as they had when Marshall was a child.
    Willie Marshall continued to work during the spring and summer months, but the Depression cut down on the money the rich had to fritter away at the club. Meanwhile, Aubrey Marshall opened his own medical practice on Carey Street as a general practitioner. Business was slow, however. One of his Old West Baltimore friends recalled that most of the black doctors in Baltimore were supported by their wives, who were usually schoolteachers. “Negroes didn’t have any money for a doctor,” said Pat Patterson, who lived near the Marshalls. 3 As a result, Aubrey was forced to work part-time in the city’s health clinic.
    Despite the money troubles and tense atmosphere at the house, Thurgood and Buster, by most accounts, were happy together. Their main difficulty was with Buster’s attempts to have children. Several of the couple’s friends reported that Buster had a miscarriage during these years in Baltimore. The problems with pregnancy caused more than the usualanxiety for Thurgood; since he had only one testicle after his college accident, he feared that he might not ever be able to father children.
    Despite the miscarriages, Buster continued to work. She went through a series of jobs to help support the family, including one selling Bond Bread in a Jewish store near their house. She also worked in Sally’s Boutique on Druid Hill Avenue, selling women’s hats, belts, and shoes.
    Even when Buster worked, though, she sometimes had trouble getting paid. Once she went to work for a man writing a catalog of Negro businesses. After two weeks, however, the man stopped paying her. Buster asked Thurgood to sue him, but Thurgood refused, explaining it would be a waste of time because the guy probably did not have the money.
    But Buster decided she was going to get her money. She filed a complaint with the local judge, who asked why Thurgood wasn’t handling the case. She explained her husband was too busy trying to find paying clients. The judge laughed. But a few days later Buster’s nonpaying boss was arrested. She came to court and not only listed the paychecks she had not received but took the time to make an account of all the money the scoundrel owed other people around the city. The judge ruled in her favor and she got her money.
    In the meantime, her husband’s practice began to pick up. He handled divorces, personal injury, car accidents, murder, and rape cases. Marshall even handled a case for his brother, in which Aubrey was sued for $2,500 and charged by another motorist with “reckless driving.” Marshall got the case settled out of court. 4 This was a vintage early case for the young lawyer.
    But Marshall would soon find himself with three cases that were critical to his development. The first came in June of 1934. Sitting in his office one afternoon, Marshall got a nervous call from his neighbor Pat Patterson. A young black man had been arrested for murder in southern Maryland, and Patterson had convinced the suspect’s parents to hire Marshall to represent their son. Twenty-five-year-old James Gross had been charged with the murder of a man who ran a barbecue stand in nearby Prince Georges County. Local papers ran sensational stories about Gross and his accomplices, dubbing them the Three Black Dillingers, a reference to the gangster John Dillinger. 5
    “I knew the family of the boy,” said Patterson, “and they needed a lawyer, so I talked to Thurgood and he was interested. They wanted a black lawyer. There were several black lawyers in Washington that Iknew personally, but I didn’t think they had a ghost of a chance in Prince Georges County. I wasn’t sure that even Marshall would have a chance. But I felt that he probably would have a better chance coming from Maryland.”
    The trial, in the county seat of Upper Marlboro, lasted only a few days. Marshall argued that his client had just driven the car while the