Fishburne: Racism Is A Family Disease

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation‘s leading man Laurence Fishburne (Dr Ray Langston) brings Thurgood to the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles, California.

As CSI Files previously reported, Fishburne performed Thurgood in Washington, DC before returning to Los Angeles. The one-man play centers around the first African-American individual to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States, Chief Justice Thurgood Marshall. Marshall was well-known before joining the Supreme Court due to his role in the historic desegregation case Brown vs Board of Education in 1954.

“This cat, he was too important not to play,” Fishburne told the Los Angeles Times. The actor added that it was “quite a gift” to take the stage and talk about the Brown decision. “It deals with a law which, whether we recognize it or not, plays a very, very important role in our lives,” he said.

The Brown ruling was crucial to the legal dismantling of segregation in America, but Fishburne was not aware of Marshall’s role in the decision until he read Thurgood. The actor also cited another historical civil rights leader for his equally-important role in tearing down racial segregation: Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. “King was about the spiritual dismantling of it [racism] in our hearts,” Fishburne explained. “He opened a place in our hearts where we had to look at it and go, ‘This is wrong, morally wrong.’ He made us ask those questions of ourselves.”

Fishburne hopes to step back into Marshall’s shoes every few years because he enjoys the role. He also wants to continue touring with Thurgood because its subject matter is “part of our history that is not going to be unimportant or lose its real value any time soon.” Understanding Marshall’s life and accomplishments is one way for people to continue to tear down racism in their hearts and minds, Fishburne said, in order to keep healing “our wonderful, dysfunctional family: the United States of America.” He added that “racism is a family disease.”