When USA Today broke the news earlier this month that Thurgood Marshall, while lawyering for the NAACP, had cooperated with J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, elite opinion first gulped, then sputtered, then . . . sputtered some more.
The New York Times hurried to instruct that the “controversy” over the ” newly released . . . files, indicating that [Marshall] gave the Bureau information on Communists . . . shows the great danger of assessing history out of context.” What context? “Mr. Marshall may have cooperated with the FBI, but he did not do so as Hoover’s stooge.” Said the San Francisco Chronicle, “It would be premature to make much of [these] revelations.” And the Cleveland Plain Dealer: “Marshall’s extended cooperation with the FBI appears in hindsight to have been pragmatic,” for “Hoover . . . appears to have steered his seek-and-destroy mission away from the NAACP and Marshall and on to more enticing targets like Martin Luther King, Jr.” Jesse Jackson admonished, “The attempts to discredit Dr. King and Thurgood Marshall with the FBI did not work in life and will not work in death. The reality is [get ready for some Jacksonian alliteration], contact is not cooperation.” And so on.
It was remarkable to witness the confusion of the opinion-makers — What is the line, now? — and to observe the rush to protect a liberal icon from the apparently unbearable charge that he worked with the country’s chief crime investigator to prevent his civil-rights organization from being subverted and overtaken by men loyal to Joseph Stalin.
Marshall’s son, Thurgood Marshall, Jr., an aide to Vice President Gore, should have the last word. He described the relationship between Hoover and his father as an “ironic twist” and allowed, “He [Thurgood Sr.] seemed to rely [on the Bureau] a lot.” Marshall’s reputation will survive this latest bit of intelligence — for some, enhanced.
