NEW YORK CITY ? Saint Thurgood. It has a ring to it.

Episcopalians from a church where the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall worshipped want to make it a reality – they are asking their denomination to name him a saint.

Marshall, who died in 1993, was a towering figure in the civil rights movement and the first black justice to sit on the nation’s highest court.

Members of St. Augustine’s Church in Washington, D.C., will seek initial approval for the honor Friday from delegates to the convention of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington.

If approved, Marshall’s name would be added to the Book of Lesser Feasts and Fasts. A feast day in his honor would be celebrated May 17, the anniversary of his victory in the landmark 1954 desegregation case Brown v. Board of Education.

Among other contemporary Episcopal saints are the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Florence Nightingale.