This article is the third in a series featuring clips from the American Archive of Public Broadcasting, which is working to digitize television and radio pieces so that they may be preserved for years to come. For more about the project, see our introduction to the series, where you'll also find a handy list of all the series' pieces so far.

Updated, February 26: Unfortunately, due to an issue with the rights to this clip, the American Archive of Public Broadcasting had to remove the video from the Internet and it is no longer available. We regret that we can no longer include it in this piece.

Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall gave very, very few interviews in his lifetime.

Marshall, biographer Charles Zelden explains, "felt that it was a conflict of interest for a sitting judge to speak out publicly on the issue that might come before the Court."

But in 1987, Marshall broke his silence in a candid, one-hour interview with journalist Carl Rowan of WHUT (Howard University Television) in Washington, D.C. It is perhaps one of only two televised interviews he gave while on the Court (the only other, to my knowledge, is a 1990 conversation with ABC's Sam Donaldson, which does not seem to be available online).