“The death penalty seems to be for Negroes alone,” Thurgood Marshall wrote to Roy Wilkins in the national office of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), in a letter dated June 7, 1935.  As a young attorney in Baltimore, Marshall was defense counsel in several capital cases.

There were 16 executions in Maryland between 1930 and 1939 – 12 for murder and 4 for rape. All but two of the men executed were black.

Yesterday, Ben Jealous, the President and CEO of the NAACP, discussed repeal of the death penalty with Governor Martin O’Malley.

From press reports, their conversation centered on a different set of numbers – 24 in the Senate and 71 in the House.  Those are the minimum number of votes needed to pass a bill.

Our head count gives us the necessary votes to repeal the death penalty.  Now it’s time to verify.

The Marshall letter and 1930’s statistics are in Professor Larry Gibson’s Young Thurgood, a fascinating account of the future Justice’s early life and legal career in Baltimore.  I’m only a few chapters away from Marshall’s lawsuit that integrated the University of Maryland School of Law.  Some thirty years ago, I met the plaintiff in that case, Donald Gaines Murray.