Thurgood Marshall, originally Thoroughgood Marshall, (born July 2, 1908, Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.âdied January 24, 1993, Bethesda), lawyer, civil rights activist, and associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1967â91), the Courtâs first African American member. As an attorney, he successfully argued before the Court the case of Brown v.
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 âŚ
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.
Mar 02, 2022 ¡ Last updated: Mar 2, 2022 ⢠4 min read. Thurgood Marshallâa lawyer and the first Black Supreme Court Justiceâplayed 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.
From 1965 to 1967, Marshall served under President Lyndon B. Johnson as solicitor general, the governmentâs 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.
Clarence Thomas | |
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Assumed office October 23, 1991 | |
Nominated by | George H. W. Bush |
Preceded by | Thurgood Marshall |
Thurgood Marshall, originally Thoroughgood Marshall, (born July 2, 1908, Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.âdied January 24, 1993, Bethesda), lawyer, civil rights activist, and associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1967â91) , the Courtâs first African American member. As an attorney, he successfully argued before the Court the case of Brown v.
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 âs 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.
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 âseparate but equalâ doctrine established in Plessy v. Ferguson [1896]), but it was Marshallâs 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.
Throughout the 1940s and â50s Marshall distinguished himself as one of the countryâs 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 stateâs exclusion of African American voters from primary elections ( Smith v.
Marshall served on the Supreme Court as it underwent a period of major ideological change.
Ferguson [1896]), but it was Marshallâs 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 ...
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.
To fail to do so is to ensure that America will forever remain a divided society.â. 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.
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 âseparate but equalâ 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 âseparate but equalâ and acknowledging that segregation greatly diminished studentsâ self-esteem. Asked by Justice Felix Frankfurter during the argument what he meant by âequal,â Mr. Marshall replied, âEqual means getting the same thing, at the same time, and in the same place.
Marshallâs 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 Americaâs official doctrine of separate-but-equal.
Among Marshallâs salient majority opinions for the Supreme Court were: Amalgamated Food Employees Union v. Logan Valley Plaza, in 1968, which determined that a mall was âpublic forumâ and unable to exclude picketers; Stanley v. Georgia, in 1969, held that pornography, when owned privately, could not be prosecuted.
On the appointment, President Johnson later said that Marshallâs nomination was âthe right thing to do, the right time to do it, the right man and the right place.â.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.".
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.
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.
As an attorney fighting to secure equality and justice through the courts, Thurgood Marshall helped build the legal foundation for Martin Luther Kingâs challenges to segregation. On 6 February 1958, King wrote Marshall to express his gratitude for Marshallâs efforts in the Montgomery bus boycott: âWe will remain eternally grateful to you ...
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.
Marshallâs most historic victory came in 1954 with Brown v. Board of Education, in which Marshall argued successfully against the doctrine of âseparate but equal,â convincing the court that segregated schools were inherently unequal, and beginning the process of school desegregation.
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 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 governmentâs 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.
If you want to write a book, you go to jail and write itââ (Marshall , 471). Marshall did acknowledge King as âa great speaker,â and conceded that the protests âachieved much. If you put them in the scale, they would weigh very heavy, because it reached peopleâs consciousnessâ (Marshall, 479).
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 âlegal segregationâ. He has been the proud recipient of a number of awards and certifications for his outstanding contribution to the field of civil rights.
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.
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.
The 1940s was an extremely crucial period for Marshall as he fought a number of cases, winning most of them including the âSmith v. Allwrightâ case in 1944. Four years later, he also won the âShelly v. Kraemerâ case.
In 1940, he won his first U.S. Supreme Court âChambers v. Floridaâ 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 âSmith v.
Oklahoma State Regentsâ case and the âSweatt v. Painterâ 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 âBrown v. Board of Educationâ case at Topeka, in 1954.