Thurgood is Coming
A performance, written and played by Dr. Lenneal Henderson
Tuesday, February 24, 2015, 6:30-8:30 p.m.
Pacifica Graduate Institute
Ladera Campus, Barrett Center
To commemorate the 50th anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas’ Supreme Court Decision, Dr. Lenneal Henderson, a distinguished scholar, educator, playwright and actor, wrote Thurgood is Coming, a one-man play. Dr. Henderson will perform the role of Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993), who dedicated his life to challenge racial barriers in education, housing, electoral politics, and criminal justice. Marshall won the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education case in 1954 and became the first African American to serve on the US Supreme Court. As Chief Counsel for the NAACP, he successfully argued many cases for the Supreme Court. Marshall also helped to draft bills of rights for Kenya and the constitution of Ghana.
Dr. Henderson is currently Distinguished Professor of Government and Public Administration, Senior Fellow at the William Donald Schaefer Center for Public Policy, and Senior Fellow in the Hoffberger Center for Professional Ethics at the University of Baltimore where he was formerly a Henry C. Welcome Fellow. He is also on the faculty of the Community Psychology, Liberation Psychology, Indigenous Psychologies, and Ecopsychology specialization at Pacifica Graduate Institute, and the Fielding Graduate University in the School of Human and Organizational Development, and School of Educational Leadership and Change. Dr. Henderson holds the Daniel T. Blue Endowment Professor of Political Science at North Carolina Central University. He currently serves on the boards of LifeNet Health Inc., the Environmental Action Foundation, and the Board of the Maryland Humanities Council. He has been on the boards of the African American History and Culture Commission, the Baltimore Urban League, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, and is a founding member of the Reginald Lewis Maryland Museum of African American History and culture.
In addition, Dr. Henderson is a distinguished international presenter and lecturer on social, political, and economic policies, urban dynamics and racial and ethnic studies, and natural resource policies in many countries such as Bulgaria, India, Zimbabwe, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Kosovo.
His books include: Black Political Life in the United States; Administrative Advocacy: Black Administrators in Urban Bureaucracies; The New Black Politics: The Search for Political Power (co-editor); Public Administration and Public Policy: A Minority Perspective (co-editor), and most recently, Dimensions of Learning: Education for Life (co-editor).
