A.C. Smith (Photo: Joe Mazza)

Thurgood Marshall

Columbia College Chicago Theatre Department alumnus A.C. Smith ’86, a graduate of the Theatre Department’s BA Program in Theatre, stars as civil rights icon Thurgood Marshall in the one-man play Thurgood, running June 2 through 4 at Court Theatre in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood. This dramatic tribute to Justice Thurgood Marshall’s pioneering career and legacy as the first African-American to sit on the Supreme Court revisits landmark civil rights victories and explores the moments in history that are still charged with a moral urgency today.

A.C. Smith

A.C. Smith is a favorite with audiences at Chicago’s Court Theatre, having appeared there in such plays as August Wilson’s Fences (for which he won a Joseph Jefferson Award in 2006) and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. He has also acted in Chicago at the Goodman Theatre, Victory Gardens Theatre, Writers Theatre, and other venues, as well as in regional theatres around the country.

Before joining the U.S. Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993) was a prominent civil rights lawyer. As head of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, he argued many important cases before the Supreme Court, including Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), the case in which the Supreme Court ruled that “separate but equal” public education was not applicable to public education because it could never be truly equal. Marshall joined the Supreme Court in 1967 after being nominated by President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Tickets to Thurgood are $10, or free to Court Theatre subscribers. For more information, call 773-753-4472 or click here.