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light-skinned Willie Marshall was in charge of hiring the allblack dining room staff at the club, and he hired Thurgood as a waiter that summer, after his first year of college.
    Working at Gibson Island, Thurgood became a popular figure with the powerful whites who frequented the exclusive watering hole. And Albert Fox, the club’s secretary, who was in charge of all the staff and facilities, regarded Thurgood as a son. Fox and Willie Marshall were drinking partners, and Fox delighted in introducing Thurgood to first-rate whiskey, “a forty-year-old hogshead of old Pikesville bourbon.”
    Thurgood’s relationship with Fox gave him protection whenever he had to deal with some of the more racist whites at the club, but he still had to face prejudice. One day Thurgood was waiting on tables when in came a U.S. senator, “a very vulgah individual,” according to Marshall. The senator saw Thurgood and shouted, “Hey, nigger.”
    Marshall, who was taught to fight anyone who called him that, for some reason held his temper and went over to his table.
    “Nigger, I want service at this table,” the old senator yelled out. The college man decided to play along, not wanting to lose his job. The senator got more and more into showing off for his dinner guests as he hailed Thurgood with shouts of “Nigger” and “Boy.” But when dinner was over, he left an astounding twenty-dollar tip. He did the same every day for nearly a week, giving Thurgood the best-paying week of his young life and putting Thurgood a major step closer to paying his tuition for the coming school year.
    But one night Willie Marshall overheard the senator’s rank language and saw Thurgood running up to the table, bowing and saying “Yes, sir!” His father pulled Thurgood into a corner and told him: “You are fired! You are a disgrace to the colored people!”
    Thurgood quickly explained that he was making big money off the senator’s obnoxious behavior. In later telling the story, Marshall said he explained to his dad, “Now I figure it’s worth about twenty dollars to becalled nigger.… But the minute you run out of them twenties … I’m gonna bust you in the nose!” 7
    This more pragmatic Thurgood was a changed man from the youngster who had dropped the hatboxes and started swinging after being called a name. Having felt his father’s money woes, as well as his mother’s ambition to get him into a good college, Thurgood was fast learning the importance of playing the game even as he stood up for his principles.
    Thurgood had his emerging racial consciousness wrenched on another occasion at Gibson Island. He had a steady friendship with a member of the club who was unfailingly courteous and had been giving him generous tips. One day the man’s wife had an accident while driving to the club in her husband’s Rolls-Royce. Thurgood made sure she was okay, phoned her husband to let him know about the accident, and even helped repair the car.
    Later, the man hired Thurgood to work at a private party at the family’s Baltimore home. The woman showed him a room full of toys abandoned by her grown children. Thurgood mentioned that he knew people in Old West Baltimore who worked with handicapped children and that they would love to have the toys. The woman got excited and immediately offered to donate the toys to the children. A moment later, however, she asked Thurgood if the kids were black. “Yes, ma’am,” he told her. Her face suddenly red and drawn tight, she responded, “I’m not going to give them anything.”
    Thurgood finished his work that night with a fascination for what was going on in the mind of that rich, white woman. But he walked away filled with more pity than bitterness.
    Despite his hurtful experiences with a few white people at the club, Thurgood never leaped to the conclusion that whites were all racists. He was still close to several white men he considered his mentors, such as the club’s secretary, Mr. Fox, and