Commentary
Appreciation: Henry L. Marsh III

Bob Lewis
January 28, 2025 5:25 am

It could be easy at times to forget that Sen. Henry Marsh was even there, listening quietly from his back-row desk in the Senate of Virginia. ... Marsh, who died last week at the age of 91, wasn’t flashy or given to florid oratory. He had long ago tilted at his share of windmills in a consequential career as a civil rights lawyer and political leader who cut a wide swath on behalf of people of color.

The years had taught Henry L. Marsh III to listen harder than he spoke. It served him well as he continued his fight at an age when most people who have achieved as greatly as he had were peacefully retired. ... When he did speak, it was softly — just above a whisper — and sometimes haltingly, but his words were heard. They were rooted in the bitter experience of a Black man who had spent most of his life casting Jim Crow’s yoke off his people, so he commanded the attention of friends and adversaries alike.

In a time before political parties became intractable redoubts of hardened and sometimes extreme conflicting ideologies, Marsh’s gentle voice made a difference. ... Few people brought the sort of portfolio to the General Assembly that Marsh did.

He had been a classmate and roommate of Doug Wilder at Howard University’s School of Law. Both would become Virginia trailblazers. In 1989, Wilder became the nation’s first elected Black governor. ... In 1977, Marsh became the first Black mayor of Richmond, once the seat of a seditious breakaway government formed to perpetuate the enslavement of Black people.

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Bob Lewis covered Virginia government and politics for 20 years for The Associated Press. Now retired from a public relations career at McGuireWoods, he is a columnist for the Virginia Mercury. He can be reached at blewis@virginiamercury.com. Twitter: @BobLewisOfRVA