Thurgood Marshall center to mark Baltimore history, serve as launchpad for future
By: Jonathan M. Pitts
PUBLISHED: June 26, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. | UPDATED: June 28, 2024 at 11:04 a.m.
While growing up in Upton in West Baltimore in the 1950s, the Rev. Alvin Hathaway says, barely a day went by when he didn’t interact with some of the teachers, doctors, lawyers and political figures who lived nearby and whose success made it the envy of the city’s Black population.
It pained him over the years to see poverty and social decay swamp the neighborhood. He wanted people to recall what had made it special and decided to do something about it someday.
Now the Baptist minister and civic leader is about to realize a major part of that dream.
Hathaway’s labor of love of the past five years has transformed a historic elementary school building, P.S. 103, into the Justice Thurgood Marshall Amenity Center. The community hub that he intends to have a regional and national footprint opens Tuesday, marking the birth of a gathering space meant to honor the past and turn that past into a launching pad for the future.
Hathaway, the former longtime senior pastor of historic Union Baptist Church in Upton, is also founding president and CEO of Beloved Community Services Corp., a nonprofit that focuses on rehabilitating historic properties as a way of revitalizing distressed communities in Baltimore. It restores buildings as close to their original condition as possible for use by organizations that provide resources ranging from community spaces to legal, educational, public health and workforce development services.
The Marshall Amenity Center, named for the best-known of P.S. 103’s many successful alumni, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, will boast many such offerings.
One anchor tenant, the Judge Alexander Williams Jr. Center for Education, Justice and Ethics of the University of Maryland, is set to continue in its role as a research hub on legal issues underlying persistent social disparities and provide no-cost legal services to community members. Others will offer STEM-related educational services and exposure to career opportunities. The center will also provide standing exhibits, a speaker series, and matinee showings of first-run movies.
The Rev. Dr. Alvin Hathaway, right, talks with Chuck McCoy, center, of Media Minds Company about a media wall being installed in the Thurgood Marshall Amenity Center. (Barbara Haddock Taylor/Staff)
