Episcopal Minister Opposes Canonizing Popular Civil Rights Hero
By Allie Martin and Jenni Parker
February 8, 2006

(AgapePress) - Episcopalians may soon be celebrating the "Feast of St. Thurgood" if the Episcopal Diocese of Washington (DC) has its way. The diocese, which represents churches in the District of Columbia and the Maryland counties of Charles, St. Mary's, Prince George's and Montgomery, recently voted to ask the 2006 General Convention of the Episcopal Church to grant sainthood to the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and to include him in the church's official book of Lesser Feasts and Fasts.

If the resolution is approved by the denomination, Episcopal Churches will celebrate May 17 as Marshall's feast day. On that date in 1954, Marshall, then chief counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), won the landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka school desegregation case, having argued that racially segregated public education, though touted as "separate but equal," was inherently unconstitutional because it could never be truly equal. Story