Marshall, Thurgood (1908–1993)

Thurgood Marshall was the first African American justice to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, appointed in 1967. He had been a successful civil rights lawyer, winning twenty-nine of thirty-two cases he argued before the Court, including Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. In an earlier federal appointment, nominated by President John F Kennedy and confirmed after fiery Senate debates, Marshall served from 1961 to 1965 as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Subsequently, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Marshall as solicitor general of the United States in 1965, a position in which he served until 1967, when President Johnson named him as Associate Justice to the U.S. Supreme Court. An African American had never before held any of these positions. This entry describes Marshall's life and achievements.

Early Years

Born in Baltimore, Maryland, on July 2, 1908, to William and Norma Williams Marshall, the future justice attended local racially segregated elementary and secondary schools. After graduating from Douglass High School in 1925, he attended Lincoln University in Chester County, Pennsylvania. At that time, Lincoln was a college for African American men. [Page 875]Marshall met many Black men who would assume leadership roles throughout the nation. He was a member of the varsity debating team, which faced off on various topics with interracial and international opponents.

Official portrait of the 1976 U.S. Supreme Court: Justice Thurgood Marshall. Besides being a lifelong advocate for civil rights, Marshall strongly supported free speech, stood firmly against use of the death penalty, and was a defender of a woman's right to an abortion.

Source: Public domain.

Marshall married Vivian G. Burey in 1929, and, upon his graduation in 1930, he decided to pursue a law degree. He thought about attending the University of Maryland law school, but it was not open to African American students at that time. Instead, he attended Howard University law school, where he met his mentor, the law school dean, Charles Hamilton Houston, an accomplished Harvard law school graduate. Howard was a coeducational university open to all qualified students but attended primarily by African Americans. Many African American law students who argued and analyzed their civil rights cases at the law school later went on to become the vanguard in the Civil Rights Movement.