As the body of civil rights lawyer and legislator Henry L. Marsh III lies in state at the Virginia State Capitol on Jan. 30, his legislative assistant, Valerie Braxton (at right), is comforted by Grindly Johnson, former deputy secretary of transportation, while Sandra D. Norman waits to speak with Braxton. (Photo by Jay Paul)
Henry L. Marsh III, who died at age 91 on Jan. 23, entered public service during a fraught and transitional period of the mid-20th century. He ultimately served 25 years on the Richmond City Council and 22 years in the state Senate.
In 1970, the city annexed 23 square miles of Chesterfield County. Activist Curtis Holt Sr. argued that the decision was racially motivated and meant to dilute the vote of nonwhites. It went to the United States Supreme Court. Richmond’s elections froze until the court reached a decision, which led to the city’s voting process being broken into a ward system.
Marsh, Richmond’s first Black mayor and a long-serving state senator, died Jan. 23 at age 91. (Photo courtesy Senate of Virginia)
When elections resumed in 1977 — and while the city’s administration worked with the city manager-council system — Marsh’s colleagues appointed him as mayor. He became the first African American to serve in that position, and he had a Black majority on council. Marsh was fitted to become a motivating force in those changing times.
Born into a racially segregated Richmond, he graduated from the Church Hill elementary school that today bears his name, as well as Maggie L. Walker High School, Virginia Union University and Howard University in Washington, D.C., where he studied law. In 1961, he founded the Richmond law firm that would evolve into one with three civil rights attorneys: Marsh, Oliver Hill and Samuel W. Tucker. Marsh and his colleagues fought many important legal battles to end the era of segregation.
His terms as mayor, from 1977 to 1982, were a time of urban renewal, highway building and a struggle by the city to reposition itself. Marsh remained on the council until 1991, and the next year went to the Senate of Virginia, from which he retired in 2014.
