Columbia unveils Thurgood Marshall statue

A new statue honoring late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall’s time in Columbia was unveiled downtown after more than two decades of effort. The statue completes a new roundabout project at the intersection of East 8th and South Main streets, also commemorating the 1945 Columbia Uprising. Long before his historic supreme court appointment, Marshall served the lawyer for several black men tried in Lawrenceburg and Columbia after the uprising. The statue was taken from a 1956 photograph of Marshall on the steps of the Maury County Courthouse in Columbia and completed by artist David Alan Clark. The ceremony also marked 58 years after Marshall was sworn in as the first black supreme court justice.