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Out of the Congo. Thurgood Marshall says: "American Negroes have no ties with Africa. Their history begins right here." Nevertheless, like a Virginia gentleman recalling the ancestral manor in Gloucestershire, Marshall begins his family history in the old country with a great-grandfather on his mother's side. "Way back before the Civil War, this rich man from Maryland went to the Congo on a hunting expedition or something. The whole time he was there, this little black boy trailed him around. So when they got ready to come back to this country, they just picked him up and brought him along. The years passed and he grew up, and, boy, he grew up into one mean man. One day his owner came to him and said: 'You're so evil I got to get rid of you. But I haven't the heart to sell you or give you to another man. So I'll tell you what I'll do: if you'll get out of the town and county and state, I'll give you your freedom.' Well, my great-grandfather never said a word, just looked at him. And he walked off the place, settled down a couple miles away, raised his family and lived there till the day he died. And nobody ever laid a hand on him."
This most un-African parable of independence is succeeded in Marshall's repertory of family stories by his paternal grandfather, "a rough and tough sailor-man. He never knew what his first name was so he took two—Thoroughgood and Thornygood. He drew two sailor's pensions till the day he died—one in each name. I was named Thoroughgood after him but by the time I was in the second grade, I got tired of spelling all that and shortened it." His maternal grandfather, Isaiah O. B. (for Olive Branch, he said) Williams, also went to sea, came home with money and a taste for opera and Shakespeare. He opened a grocery on Baltimore's Den-meade Street, and sired six children. The first was Avonia Delicia and the second Avon (both for the bard's river), the third was Denmedia Marketa (for the store), another was Norma Arica (he heard Norma in Arica, a Chilean port) and the remaining two, for reasons lost to history, were Fearless Mentor and Ravine Silestria.
Isaiah bought a house next to a white man who turned surly and mean. One day the neighbor repented because the party fence between their property needed fixing; he suggested that they do the job together. "After all," said the white man, "we belong to the same church and are going to the same heaven." But Isaiah, remembering the slights he had received, turned down the olive branch. "I'd rather go to hell," he snapped.