By the summer of 1975, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall had gained a reputation as a curmudgeon with little warmth in his heart for his home city of Baltimore or the state of Maryland. When University of Maryland School of Law professor Larry S. Gibson met Thurgood Marshall that summer he was surprised to find that the man he was speaking with defied these stereotypes. Gibson was, therefore, inspired to embark upon a meticulous research venture to push aside the misconceptions and myths that tainted a true comprehension of Thurgood Marshall's multifaceted personality. Eventually the products of this endeavor would turn into the engaging and exhaustively researched biography, Young Thurgood: The Making of a Supreme Court Justice.

Gibson's work is an easily digestible read, aimed at a more general audience than the typical academic history of civil rights lawyering. Still, it tells a story valuable for legal historians. Whereas Thurgood Marshall's central role in dismantling racial segregation after joining the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) legal staff in 1936 and his jurisprudence while sitting on the Second Circuit and the Supreme Court benches are celebrated portions of United States history, Gibson offers the first in-depth examination of Marshall's formative years. Marshall's family allowed Gibson access to heretofore unavailable primary sources such as personal family files, albums, and academic records, allowing Gibson to present the juvenile Marshall with a level of accuracy that had been impossible for other historians to match. Gibson depicts the influences upon a young Thurgood Marshall that shaped the lawyer and judge Marshall was to become. He explores the racial dynamics of Baltimore in the first half of the twentieth century, describes Marshall's influential extended family, and explains how quality black public schools, colleges, and law schools served as a seedbed for a budding civil rights leader.

In his discussion of the education available to blacks in the era of Marshall's youth, the author acknowledges the distressing state of schools in the Deep South and demonstrates how a visit to these communities in 1933 would encourage Marshall to fight vehemently for the desegregation of public schools in the United States. However, what is unique about Young Thurgood is that Gibson also brings forward a view of black schools that has been largely forgotten in the traditional historic narrative. His work reveals the ironic fact that the racist social structure that made it difficult for one generation of gifted black scholars to find employment in their fields led many of these brilliant minds to become exceptional teachers and mentors to members of the generation that would dismantle Jim Crow.

Marshall, a member of the latter generation, was adept at encouraging these notable people to mentor him. Gibson reveals through anecdotes and snippets of interviews with Marshall's teachers and classmates, that it was Marshall's clear eagerness to learn that convinced educators to take this particular student under their wing. Once he arrived at Howard Law School, Marshall was principally influenced by Charles Hamilton Houston, dean of the law school and orchestrator of the attack on Plessy v. Ferguson's “separate but equal” doctrine. Gibson, in describing the mentor and mentee relationship between Houston and Marshall, illuminates many of the actions Houston took to foster the prominent role of lawyers in the civil rights movement. Marshall, as Houston's selected protégé, is illustrative of Houston's belief that cultivating effective lawyers was tantamount to creating effective social engineers.

Gibson effectively recreates the world that shaped the professional character of Thurgood Marshall. He brings to life the city streets that nurtured a future Supreme Court Justice, persuades the reader to sympathize with the challenges of a burgeoning legal career, and recognizes people and events that influenced Thurgood Marshall, including those that have been forgotten over time. This work, looking closely at the stimuli that affected Thurgood Marshall's development from a child to civil rights activist, serves a valuable role both historically and in the present day, further deciphering the mélange that breeds social activism.