ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) -- A state board on Wednesday approved changing the name of the Baltimore-Washington International Airport to honor the late Thurgood Marshall.
The change drew criticism from Comptroller William Donald Schaefer, a former governor and member of the Board of Public Works. Schaefer said Marshall, the first black Supreme Court justice, often snubbed Baltimore.
Schaefer complained that when Baltimore dedicated a statue to Marshall, he refused to come until he was persuaded by William Brennan, then a Supreme Court justice.
''He had his idiosyncrasies,'' responded state Delegate Emmett Burns, who sponsored a measure approved by the Legislature in April calling for the name change.
Schaefer also said Marshall, a Baltimore native, stayed away from ceremonies when the library at the University of Maryland law school, where he was once denied admission, was named for him.
''This is wrong. It shouldn't be done,'' Schaefer said of the airport name change.
Burns, who is black, shot back: ''The Legislature didn't think it was wrong.''
Gov. Robert Ehrlich, a Republican, and the public works panel's other member, Democratic State Treasurer Nancy Kopp, voted for the name change, the final step in the process. Schaefer abstained.
The new name, effective Oct. 1, will be Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport.
Before his appointment to the Supreme Court, Marshall was a civil rights attorney who successfully argued the Brown v. Board of Education lawsuit that resulted in school segregation being struck down as unconstitutional. He also was a federal judge and the U.S. solicitor general.
Marshall was denied admission to the University of Maryland because he was black and went to Howard University instead.
Copyright 2005 Associated Press
