Cecilia Marshall Continues Grandfather’s Civil Rights Legacy
AP Photo
For the Marshalls, the combination of law and civil rights is the family business … and an illustrious family it is. Cecilia Marshall is the granddaughter of the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. She is the managing director of scholarships and programs for the Asian & Pacific Islander American Scholarship Fund, and she was in Atlanta this weekend for the opening of the play “Thurgood” at Theatrical Outfit.
“To be honest, I tried to avoid stepping into the legacy of my grandfather,” Marshall told “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes. “Those were shoes that, growing up, I knew that I couldn’t fill. I was afraid to go into something that was in that same realm.”
But Marshall, who identifies as Filipino, African-American and white, found her way into that legacy through her work at APIASF’s Gates Millennium Scholarship Program, which supports African-American, American-Indian, Alaskan Native, Hispanic-American, and Asian- and Pacific Islander-American students.
“This is a social justice issue, this is a civil rights issue,” she says of the education inequities that exist in the United States.
“As I tried to stay away from trying to fill those shoes,” Marshall says, “I found myself doing work that supports […] students that not too long ago wouldn’t even have been able to attend these colleges.”
9(MDAxODM0MDY4MDEyMTY4NDA3MzI3YjkzMw004))
Top Stories
