Chadwick Boseman.

Friday, August 28th, 2020

If you go back through the Twitter feed of the late Chadwick Boseman, who died on Friday, you feel the energy, the fervency he was trying to pour in to getting people to the polls in 2020, right up until a very few days ago.

This while battling colon cancer. And working, over four years, on films as diverse as Avengers: Civil War, Marshall, Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame, 21 Bridges, and Da 5 Bloods. Before that, he portrayed a memorable Jackie Robinson in 42.

But I think my favorite is Thurgood Marshall, because Marshall was probably my favorite Supreme Court justice, and Boseman truly brought him to life on the screen.

Boseman was a young man. A 2000 Howard University grad. Born in Anderson, South Carolina (not far across the border from Georgia.)

In 2018, he delivered the Howard commencement address, saying in small part, “Everything that you fought for was not for yourself, it was for those who came after you.”

“I don’t know what your future is,” he told the graduates, “but if you’re willing to take the harder way, the more complicated one, the one with more failures at first than successes … then you will not regret it.”