COLUMBIA, Tenn. (WTVF) — We are just weeks away from a statue unveiling that will share a part of Columbia's history in a new way. It involves a famous name, Thurgood Marshall, and the case that brought him to middle Tennessee nearly 80 years ago.
"We're going to have a power packed morning," Trent Ogilvie told a group gathered for a Columbia Peace and Justice Initiative meeting.
Ogilvie is a co-founder of the group.
"It's good to see so many friends, familiar faces. We welcome you. We've got a lot of things to celebrate."
A project has truly been years in the making for the Columbia Peace and Justice Initiative.
I first met Ogilvie nearly two years ago as he was hoping something could better tell the story of a section of Columbia's E. 8th St.
"When I look at it, it really hurts," Ogilvie told me in 2023. "A lot of that history and culture has been lost. That was the heart of the Black community, the economic center of the Black community."
In the 1940s, the era of WWII, E. 8th St. was an area of banks, barbershops, and theaters. It was 1946 that the story changed.
It began with a Black WWII veteran named James Stephenson. He was in an argument with a white shop worker over a radio that'd been left for repair.
"Mr. Stephenson said he was punched in the back of his head," Ogilvie said. "He was a welterweight boxer, having served in the Navy."
The shop worker was punched through a window. An initial charge on Stephenson was changed to attempted murder. A mob arrived in the area to try to find Stephenson but was met with the resistance of Black residents. Some were armed on the rooftops of the buildings.
"No, James Stephenson is not going to be lynched," Ogilvie continued. "We're not going to have another social lynching in Columbia, Tennessee."
What followed is now called the Columbia Race Riot of 1946.
"At the end of all of that, there were 25 [Black men] who were charged," Ogilvie said.
Thurgood Marshall became the lead attorney to defend Stephenson and the 25 other men.
"They were found not guilty and acquitted," Ogilvie said.
In the two years since I talked to Ogilvie last, the city council passed a plan and a lot of work has been finished on a new roundabout in downtown Columbia. At the center of it will be a bronze statue of Thurgood Marshall, a man with that significant tie to Columbia who would later become the Supreme Court's first African American justice.
"Mr. Marshall's life is well worth celebrating," said sculptor David Alan Clark. "It's well worth doing work like that for the community when it means so much to them."
Clark is handling the Marshall statue. With that, he had a model come in to get the pose from all angles. He then did work with clay, shaping the piece.
"We look at those poses as a one frame movie," Clark said. "We're trying to tell a narrative to people, and we have one frame to do it. Thurgood Marshall had a tremendous force of personality, a tremendous force of intellect. He had a lot of energy, a lot of momentum."
Clark wanted Marshall to be seen walking, just as if he was headed to a courthouse to represent that group of men.
A statue unveiling is set for October 3 in downtown Columbia at 5pm.
Clark said there's a hope he has for this specific statue.
"[That people] just go back and see this gentleman's life and how much he did and how much he sacrificed to bring some measure of social justice to society, how hard he worked to right some wrongs," he explained.
Do you have a positive, good news story? You can email me at forrest.sanders@newschannel5.com.
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