Free Thurgood Marshall by Juan Williams Page B

called Charles Houston, whom he knew from the labor movement. Houston agreed to represent him if he could have Marshall, who knew the Baltimore courts and judges, as his cocounsel. Soon after they took the case, Judge Coleman called the two black attorneys into his chambers. He felt Ades had unfairly damaged his reputation by accusing him of racism. If Marshall and Houston made any similar charges, the judge warned, he would have them jailed for contempt of court.
    Marshall and Houston did not know what to do. If they abandoned their arguments, they had no defense for Ades. But if they went into court the next day and contended that racism was at the root of the case, the judge was going to put them in jail. Word of their dilemma spread through Baltimore.
    “The judge was about to put me in jail, and this client of mine, JohnMurphy [of the
Afro
newspaper], came by,” Marshall remembered. “Here, I’ve got something for you to go to court,” Murphy told him. A curious Marshall opened the envelope and found inside five $1,000 bills. His eyes wide with astonishment, he turned to Murphy, who told him, “That’s for your bail.”
    Luckily for Marshall and Houston, Judge Coleman decided to recuse himself from the case, and another judge took his place. The case ended with Ades being given a reprimand, but he was allowed to continue practicing law. Marshall and Houston had won an important case. In local legal circles Marshall’s reputation now stood large. He was seen as a good attorney and also the black lawyer who made integrationist history by defending a white lawyer.
    Now that he was a courthouse regular, Marshall tried his best to become an insider among the white legal fraternity. He brought a personal yet respectful manner to the legal bar and its white judges. Despite the segregated nature of legal proceedings, he learned to work within the ropes of legal segregation. He only demanded fair treatment.
    To bolster his case for racial equality, Marshall took to heart Houston’s advice to be twice as good as white lawyers. His briefs were carefully written, and his arguments were well reasoned. “I never filed a paper in any court with an erasure on it. If I changed a word, it had to be typed all over,” he said. 10 Marshall’s diligence regularly won judges to his side. Once, when an opposing white lawyer asked a white judge for time to check on the legal citations in Marshall’s brief, the judge said it was not necessary. Even though the judge had a reputation for giving black lawyers a rough time, he told the white attorney: “You don’t have to worry about that—if Mr. Marshall puts his signature on it, you don’t have to check.”
    Marshall’s good relationship with white judges, including the bigots, led them to call on him in cases where they wanted a solid black lawyer in the courtroom to protect themselves against charges of racial bias. One night Marshall got a call from the local judge in nearby Frederick, Maryland, alerting him that a lynching was about to happen. Marshall hopped in his rickety, used 1929 Ford, nicknamed Betsy, that he had bought with Uncle Fee’s help. When he got to Frederick, Marshall saw a scary, chaotic scene. The police were racing around, some grabbing black men and leading them to the jails. Marshall became worried for his own safety. Working up his courage, he drove his car next to a state trooper and asked for an escort to the judge’s house. “You want some protection?”the policeman asked him. Marshall, who by then had sweated through his shirt with worry, replied: “That’s what I’m talking about.”
    When a relieved Marshall arrived at the judge’s house, he told him that Geraldine Kreh, the eighteen-year-old daughter of a local bank president, had been beaten up during an attempted rape by a black man. Marshall was called to make sure that all the rules were followed in identifying and charging a suspect.
    That night William Carter, a black workman, was