With military as with civil cases, Marshall urged his staff to exercise caution in choosing which cases to represent, to look at the person beyond the color. It was a principle Marshall had established early in his legal career at the NAACP, and one he would follow for nearly a quarter century. “My dad told me way back”—way back being when young Thurgood was growing up in Baltimore—“that you can’t use race. For example, there’s no difference between a white snake and a black snake. They’ll both bite.” Some lessons you don’t forget.
