what kind of lawyer was thurgood marshal

by Prof. Richmond Wisoky 7 min read

civil-rights lawyer

What did Thurgood Marshall do as Solicitor General?

Thurgood Marshall, originally Thoroughgood Marshall, (born July 2, 1908, Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.—died January 24, 1993, Bethesda), lawyer, civil rights activist, and associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1967–91), the Court’s first African American member. As an attorney, he successfully argued before the Court the case of Brown v.

Where did Thurgood Marshall go to Law School?

Thurgood Marshall. Thurgood Marshall was a civil rights lawyer who used the courts to fight Jim Crow and dismantle segregation in the U.S. Marshall was a towering figure who became the nation's first Black United States Supreme Court Justice. He is …

What did Thurgood Marshall argue in the Supreme Court?

Nov 17, 2019 ¡ Thurgood Marshall was a successful civil rights attorney, the first African American Supreme Court justice and a prominent advocate for racial equality.

What is Thurgood Marshall best known for?

Mar 02, 2022 · Last updated: Mar 2, 2022 • 4 min read. Thurgood Marshall—a lawyer and the first Black Supreme Court Justice—played a pivotal role during the civil rights movement. Learn more about his life, career, and several notable cases he argued before the Supreme Court, including Brown v. Board of Education.

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From 1965 to 1967, Marshall served under President Lyndon B. Johnson as solicitor general, the government’s chief appellant lawyer before the Supreme Court, another first for an African American. In 1967 Marshall was confirmed to the Supreme Court, where he remained the first and only African American justice until he retired in 1991.

Was Thurgood Marshall a defense lawyer?

Soon after graduating first in his class from Howard University's law school, Marshall marched into the South to represent criminal defendants, soldiers, and laborers in jury trials. He coordinated the NAACP's national legal strategy in countless lawsuits and hounded the FBI to prevent or respond to racial violence.Oct 15, 2015

What is Thurgood Marshall best known for?

Thurgood Marshall was a civil rights lawyer who used the courts to fight Jim Crow and dismantle segregation in the U.S. Marshall was a towering figure who became the nation's first Black United States Supreme Court Justice. He is best known for arguing the historic 1954 Brown v.

Was Thurgood Marshall half white?

Thurgood Marshall's Family

Marshall was born to Norma A. Marshall and William Canfield on July 2, 1908. His parents were mulatottes, which are people classified as being at least half white. Norma and William were raised as “Negroes” and each taught their children to be proud of their ancestry.

What was Thurgood Marshall job?

Thurgood Marshall/Professions

Why did Thurgood Marshall became a lawyer?

Marshall's dad enjoyed going to court and listening to law cases. This caused Marshall to want to become a lawyer, even though his parents had hoped he would follow in his older brother's footsteps and become a dentist. Marshall attended college at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania.

Who did Clarence Thomas replace?

On July 1, 1991, President Bush nominated Clarence Thomas, a young (43 years-old) black conservative judge, to replace retiring justice Thurgood Marshall, a civil rights icon and the court's first African American justice.

Who was the first woman on the Supreme Court?

Sandra Day O'Connor
Sandra Day O'Connor was the first woman to serve as a Supreme Court justice. During the 1980 presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan promised to nominate the first woman to the U.S. Supreme Court.

How tall was Thurgood Marshall's wife?

She had a flower in her hair. He wore his trademark black horn-rimmed glasses and gazed down at her. She was a 4-foot-11 woman of Philippine descent married to a black legal giant. “He was 6-foot-2.Aug 18, 2016

Where is Thurgood Marshall buried?

Image of Where is Thurgood Marshall buried?
Arlington National Cemetery is a United States military cemetery in Arlington County, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., in whose 639 acres the dead of the nation's conflicts have been buried, beginning with the Civil War, as well as reinterred dead from earlier wars.
Wikipedia

What was Constance Baker Motley known for?

Motley was elected on February 4, 1964, to the New York State Senate (21st district), to fill the vacancy caused by the election of James Lopez Watson to the New York City Civil Court. She was the first African American woman to sit in the State Senate.

When was the segregation law passed?

In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that segregation was constitutional. The ruling established the idea of “separate but equal.” The case involved a mixed-race man who was forced to sit in the Black-designated train car under Louisiana's Separate Car Act.Nov 28, 2018

Who is the Black man on the Supreme Court?

Clarence Thomas (born June 23, 1948) is an American lawyer who serves as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. He was nominated by President George H. W.
...
Clarence Thomas
Assumed office October 23, 1991
Nominated byGeorge H. W. Bush
Preceded byThurgood Marshall
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Who was Thurgood Marshall?

Thurgood Marshall, originally Thoroughgood Marshall, (born July 2, 1908, Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.—died January 24, 1993, Bethesda), lawyer, civil rights activist, and associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1967–91) , the Court’s first African American member. As an attorney, he successfully argued before the Court the case of Brown v.

What was Marshall's first law practice?

Upon his graduation from Howard, Marshall began the private practice of law in Baltimore. Among his first legal victories was Murray v. Pearson (1935), a suit accusing the University of Maryland of violating the Fourteenth Amendment ’s guarantee of equal protection of the laws by denying an African American applicant admission to its law school solely on the basis of race. In 1936 Marshall became a staff lawyer under Houston for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); in 1938 he became the lead chair in the legal office of the NAACP, and two years later he was named chief of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

What did Marshall argue in Brown v. Board of Education?

Indeed, students of constitutional law still examine the oral arguments of the case and the ultimate decision of the Court from both a legal and a political perspective; legally, Marshall argued that segregation in public education produced unequal schools for African Americans and whites (a key element in the strategy to have the Court overrule the “separate but equal” doctrine established in Plessy v. Ferguson [1896]), but it was Marshall’s reliance on psychological, sociological, and historical data that presumably sensitized the Court to the deleterious effects of institutionalized segregation on the self-image, social worth, and social progress of African American children.

How many cases did Marshall win?

Throughout the 1940s and ’50s Marshall distinguished himself as one of the country’s top lawyers, winning 29 of the 32 cases that he argued before the Supreme Court. Among them were cases in which the Court declared unconstitutional a Southern state’s exclusion of African American voters from primary elections ( Smith v.

Why did Marshall serve on the Supreme Court?

Marshall served on the Supreme Court as it underwent a period of major ideological change.

What was the significance of Marshall's reliance on psychological, sociological, and historical data?

Ferguson [1896]), but it was Marshall’s reliance on psychological, sociological, and historical data that presumably sensitized the Court to the deleterious effects of institutionalized segregation on the self-image, social worth, and social progress of African American children. Brown v.

Where did Marshall go to law school?

After being rejected by the University of Maryland Law School because he was not white, Marshall attended Howard University Law School; he received his degree in 1933, ranking first in his class.

Where did Marshall study law?

Marshall studied law at Howard University. As counsel to the NAACP, he utilized the judiciary to champion equality for African Americans. In 1954, he won the Brown v. Board of Education case, in which the Supreme Court ended racial segregation in public schools.

Where did Marshall go to law school?

Instead of Maryland, Marshall attended law school in Washington, D.C. at Howard University, another historically Black school. The dean of Howard Law School at the time was the pioneering civil rights lawyer Charles Houston.

What was Marshall's greatest achievement?

The great achievement of Marshall's career as a civil-rights lawyer was his victory in the landmark 1954 Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. The class-action lawsuit was filed on behalf of a group of Black parents in Topeka, Kansas, whose children were forced to attend all-Black segregated schools. Through Brown v. Board, one of the most important cases of the 20th century, Marshall challenged head-on the legal underpinning of racial segregation, the doctrine of "separate but equal" established by the 1896 Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson.

What was the Supreme Court case that Marshall won?

Another crucial Supreme Court victory for Marshall came in the 1944 case of Smith v. Allwright, in which the Court struck down the Democratic Party's use of white people-only primary elections in various Southern states.

Why was Marshall rejected from law school?

Despite being overqualified academically, Marshall was rejected because of his race. This firsthand experience with discrimination in education made a lasting impression on Marshall and helped determine the future course of his career.

What did Marshall do in 1934?

Over several decades, Marshall argued and won a variety of cases to strike down many forms of legalized racism, helping to inspire the American civil rights movement.

What high school did Marshall attend?

Marshall attended Baltimore's Colored High and Training School (later renamed Frederick Douglass High School), where he was an above-average student and put his finely honed skills of argument to use as a star member of the debate team. The teenage Marshall was also something of a mischievous troublemaker.

When did Thurgood Marshall retire?

He served as Associate Justice from 1967-1991 after being nominated by President Johnson. Marshall retired from the bench in 1991 and passed away on January 24, 1993, in Washington D.C. at the age of 84. Civil rights and social change came about through meticulous and persistent litigation efforts, at the forefront of which stood Thurgood Marshall ...

What did Marshall do after he graduated?

Immediately after graduation, Marshall opened a law office in Baltimore , and in the early 1930s, he represented the local NAACP chapter in a successful lawsuit that challenged the University of Maryland Law School over its segregation policy. In addition, he successfully brought lawsuits that integrated other state universities.

What did Marshall do to ensure that America would forever remain a divided society?

To fail to do so is to ensure that America will forever remain a divided society.”. In particular, Marshall fervently dissented in cases in which the Supreme Court upheld death sentences; he wrote over 150 opinions dissenting from cases in which the Court refused to hear death penalty appeals.

What did Marshall do to end segregation?

After founding the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in 1940, Marshall became the key strategist in the effort to end racial segregation, in particular meticulously challenging Plessy v. Ferguson, the Court-sanctioned legal doctrine that called for “separate but equal” structures for white and Black people. Marshall won a series of court decisions that gradually struck down that doctrine, ultimately leading to Brown v. Board of Education, which he argued before the Supreme Court in 1952 and 1953, finally overturning “separate but equal” and acknowledging that segregation greatly diminished students’ self-esteem. Asked by Justice Felix Frankfurter during the argument what he meant by “equal,” Mr. Marshall replied, “Equal means getting the same thing, at the same time, and in the same place.

What is Marshall's legacy?

Marshall’s status as a pillar of the Civil Rights Movement is confirmed and upheld by LDF and other organizations that strive to uphold the principles of civil rights and racial justice. His legacy cannot be overstated: he worked diligently and tirelessly to end what was America’s official doctrine of separate-but-equal.

What was the Supreme Court opinion in Marshall v. Logan Valley Plaza?

Among Marshall’s salient majority opinions for the Supreme Court were: Amalgamated Food Employees Union v. Logan Valley Plaza, in 1968, which determined that a mall was “public forum” and unable to exclude picketers; Stanley v. Georgia, in 1969, held that pornography, when owned privately, could not be prosecuted.

What did President Johnson say about Marshall's nomination?

On the appointment, President Johnson later said that Marshall’s nomination was “the right thing to do, the right time to do it, the right man and the right place.”.

What was Marshall's first legal case?

After graduating from Howard, one of Marshall's first legal cases was against the University of Maryland Law School in the 1935 case Murray v. Pearson. Working with his mentor Charles Hamilton Houston, Marshall sued the school for denying admission to Black applicants solely on the basis of race.

What did Marshall do for the Supreme Court?

During his nearly 25-year tenure on the Supreme Court, Marshall fought for affirmative action for minorities, held strong against the death penalty, and supported of a woman's right to choose if an abortion was appropriate for her.

What was the impact of Marshall's rule on the Supreme Court?

His mission was equal justice for all. Marshall used the power of the courts to fight racism and discrimination, tear down Jim Crow segregation, change the status quo, and make life better for the most vulnerable in our nation.

How many cases did Marshall win?

Marshall became one of the nation's leading attorneys. He argued 32 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, winning 29. Some of his notable cases include: Smith v. Allwright (1944), which found that states could not exclude Black voters from primaries. Shelley v.

What was Marshall's most famous case?

Marshall's most famous case was the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case in which Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren noted, "in the field of public education, the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.".

Who was the first black supreme court justice?

Thurgood Marshall. Thurgood Marshall was a civil rights lawyer who used the courts to fight Jim Crow and dismantle segregation in the U.S. Marshall was a towering figure who became the nation's first Black United States Supreme Court Justice.

Where did Marshall go to law school?

A native of Baltimore, Maryland, Marshall graduated from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania in 1930. He applied to the University of Maryland Law School but was rejected because he was Black. Marshall received his law degree from Howard University Law School in 1933, graduating first in his class.

What did Thurgood Marshall do for Martin Luther King?

As an attorney fighting to secure equality and justice through the courts, Thurgood Marshall helped build the legal foundation for Martin Luther King’s challenges to segregation. On 6 February 1958, King wrote Marshall to express his gratitude for Marshall’s efforts in the Montgomery bus boycott: “We will remain eternally grateful to you ...

What did Marshall do?

Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Marshall grew up in a middle class, politically active black family, and was taught early on to challenge injustice. Marshall earned his BA from Lincoln University in 1930. Unable to enroll at the University of Maryland because of its Jim Crow admission policy, Marshall attended Howard University Law School (JD, 1933). After working in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) national office as an assistant to chief counsel Charles Houston, his former law school professor, Marshall succeeded him as NAACP chief counsel in 1938. In 1940 he began directing the newly created NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Marshall argued several landmark court cases that banned segregation practices, most notably Smith v. Allwright (1944), which won blacks the right to vote in Texas primaries; Morgan v. Virginia (1946), which banned segregation on interstate passenger carriers; and Sweatt v. Painter (1950), which required the admittance of a qualified black student to the University of Texas Law School.

What was Marshall's most significant victory?

Marshall’s most historic victory came in 1954 with Brown v. Board of Education, in which Marshall argued successfully against the doctrine of “separate but equal,” convincing the court that segregated schools were inherently unequal, and beginning the process of school desegregation.

Who was the NAACP chief counsel?

After working in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) national office as an assistant to chief counsel Charles Houston, his former law school professor, Marshall succeeded him as NAACP chief counsel in 1938.

Who appointed Marshall to the Supreme Court?

In 1961 President John F. Kennedy appointed Marshall to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, making him the second African American to serve as a federal appellate judge. From 1965 to 1967, Marshall served under President Lyndon B. Johnson as solicitor general, the government’s chief appellant lawyer before the Supreme Court, another first for an African American. In 1967 Marshall was confirmed to the Supreme Court, where he remained the first and only African American justice until he retired in 1991.

Who said if you want to write a book, you go to jail and write it?

If you want to write a book, you go to jail and write it’” (Marshall , 471). Marshall did acknowledge King as “a great speaker,” and conceded that the protests “achieved much. If you put them in the scale, they would weigh very heavy, because it reached people’s consciousness” (Marshall, 479).

What did Thurgood Marshall do?

He rose from humble beginnings and through sheer brilliance and hard work; he achieved whatever he aspired for during his lifetime. In a time when racial discrimination was prevalent in American society, he went on to become the first African-American justice, fighting all odds. Apart from being the justice of the United States Supreme Court, he was instrumental in sanctioning a number of actions in the United States viz, polling privileges for African-Americans, justice system in criminal events, public education and equalizing expenditure, thus becoming the first individual to end ‘legal segregation’. He has been the proud recipient of a number of awards and certifications for his outstanding contribution to the field of civil rights.

What is Thurgood Marshall best remembered for?

Thurgood Marshall is best remembered for his jurisprudence in the arena of civil rights and criminal proceedings. During his time as the Justice of the Supreme Court, he accumulated a liberal record that involved strong backing for Constitutional protection of individual rights, especially the rights of criminal suspects.

Where is Thurgood Marshall's memorial?

After his death, a number of memorials were built in his honor, including the one that stands at Lawyers Mall. The Thurgood Marshall Center, the Thurgood Marshall Law Library and the Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport are some of the centers/places named after him.

What case did Marshall win?

The 1940s was an extremely crucial period for Marshall as he fought a number of cases, winning most of them including the ‘Smith v. Allwright’ case in 1944. Four years later, he also won the ‘Shelly v. Kraemer’ case.

When did Marshall win the Supreme Court case?

In 1940, he won his first U.S. Supreme Court ‘Chambers v. Florida’ case at the age of 32. He was also appointed as the Chief Counsel for the NAACP the same year. The 1940s was an extremely crucial period for Marshall as he fought a number of cases, winning most of them including the ‘Smith v.

What case did the Oklahoma State Regents fight?

Oklahoma State Regents’ case and the ‘Sweatt v. Painter’ case. In 1951, he travelled to South Korea and Japan to examine charges of racism in the U.S. Armed Forces. He earned his breakthrough as a lawyer when he fought the ‘Brown v. Board of Education’ case at Topeka, in 1954.

Who Was Thurgood Marshall?

Image
Thurgood Marshall was an American lawyer who was appointed as an associate justice of the Supreme Court in 1967. He was the first African American to hold the position and served for 24 years, until 1991. Marshall studied law at Howard University. As counsel to the NAACP, he utilized the judiciary to champion equalit…
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Early Life and Family

  • Marshall was born on July 2, 1908, in Baltimore, Maryland. His father, William Marshall, was the grandson of an enslaved person who worked as a steward at an exclusive club, and his mother, Norma, was a kindergarten teacher. One of William's favorite pastimes was to listen to cases at the local courthouse before returning home to rehash the lawyers' arguments with his sons. Thu…
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Education

  • Marshall attended Baltimore's Colored High and Training School (later renamed Frederick Douglass High School), where he was an above-average student and put his finely honed skills of argument to use as a star member of the debate team. The teenage Marshall was also something of a mischievous troublemaker. His greatest high school accomplishment, memorizing the entir…
See more on biography.com

Court Cases

  • In 1934, Marshall began working for the Baltimore branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1936, Marshall moved to New York City to work full time as legal counsel for the NAACP. Over several decades, Marshall argued and won a variety of cases to strike down many forms of legalized racism, helping to inspire the American civil rights …
See more on biography.com

Circuit Court Judge and Solicitor General

  • In 1961, newly-elected President John F. Kennedyappointed Marshall as a judge for the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Serving as a circuit court judge over the next four years, Marshall issued more than 100 decisions, none of which was overturned by the Supreme Court. In 1965, Kennedy's successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, appointed Marshall to serve as the first Black U.S. soli…
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Supreme Court Justice

  • In 1967, President Johnson nominated Marshall to serve on the bench before which he had successfully argued so many times before the United States Supreme Court. On October 2, 1967, Marshall was sworn in as a Supreme Court justice, becoming the first African American to serve on the nation's highest court. Marshall joined a liberal Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice E…
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Personal Life and Wife

  • Marshall married Vivian "Buster" Burey in 1929, and the couple remained married until her death in 1955. Shortly thereafter, Marshall married Cecilia Suyat, his secretary at the NAACP. The couple had two sons together, Thurgood Jr. and John Marshall.
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Legacy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X

  • Marshall stands alongside Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm Xas one of the greatest and most important figures of the American civil rights movement. Although he may be the least popularly celebrated of the three, Marshall was arguably the most instrumental in the movement's achievements toward racial equality. Marshall's strategy of attacking racial inequality through th…
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Early life and education

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Marshall was born on July 2, 1908 in Baltimore, Maryland to William Marshall, railroad porter, who later worked on the staff of Gibson Island Club, a white-only country club and Norma Williams, a school teacher. One of his great-grandfathers had been taken as a slave from the Congo to Maryland where he was eventually fr…
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Early career

  • Immediately after graduation, Marshall opened a law office in Baltimore and in the early 1930s, he represented the local NAACP chapter in a successful lawsuit that challenged the University of Maryland Law School over its segregation policy. In addition, he successfully brought lawsuits that integrated other state universities. In 1936, Marshall became the NAACPs chief legal couns…
See more on naacpldf.org

Significance

  • After founding the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in 1940, Marshall became the key strategist in the effort to end racial segregation, in particular meticulously challenging Plessy v. Ferguson , the Court-sanctioned legal doctrine that called for separate but equal structures for white and blacks. Marshall won a series of court decisions that gradually s...
See more on naacpldf.org

Leadership

  • In 1957 LDF, led by Marshall, became an entirely separate entity from the NAACP with its own leadership and board of directors and has remained a separate organization to this day.
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Later career

  • In 1961, President Kennedy nominated Marshall to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in which he wrote 112 opinions, none of which was overturned on appeal. Four years later, he was appointed by President Johnson to be solicitor general and in 1967 President Johnson nominated him to the Supreme Court to which he commented: I have a lifetime appointment and I intend to …
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Criticisms

  • As a Supreme Court Justice, he became increasingly dismayed and disappointed as the courts majority retreated from remedies he felt were necessary to address remnants of Jim Crow. In his Bakke dissent, he wrote: In light of the sorry history of discrimination and its devastating impact on the lives of Negroes, bringing the Negro into the mainstream of American life should be a sta…
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Legacy

  • In particular, Marshall fervently dissented in cases in which the Supreme Court upheld death sentences; he wrote over 150 opinions dissenting from cases in which the Court refused to hear death penalty appeals. Among Marshalls salient majority opinions for the Supreme Court were: Amalgamated Food Employees Union v. Logan Valley Plaza, in 1968, which determined that a m…
See more on naacpldf.org