"Biography of Thurgood Marshall, First Black Supreme Court Justice." ThoughtCo, Jan. 7, 2022, thoughtco.com/thurgood-marshall-1779842.
As the first Black U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall may be the best-known African American judge. Before his appointment to the high court in 1967 by President Lyndon B. Johnson, Marshall served as Solicitor General and before that on the Second Circuit in the U.S. Court of Appeals.
"Clarence Thomas: The Justice Nobody Knows – Supreme Court Justice Gives First Television Interview To 60 Minutes". 60 Minutes. New York City: CBS Corporation. Archived from the original on May 17, 2013. Retrieved May 2, 2009.
Yet Marshall—nor Clarence Thomas, who succeeded him as the second African American Supreme Court Justice in 1991; nor Ketanji Brown Jackson, who became the first female African American Supreme Court Justice in 2022—is not the only Black judge to make his mark on the American system of jurisprudence.
Thurgood MarshallThurgood 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.
Dred ScottScott c. 1857Bornc. 1799 Southampton County, Virginia, U.S.DiedSeptember 17, 1858 (aged approximately 59) St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.Resting placeCalvary Cemetery3 more rows
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.
United States Courts of Appeals#JudgeBegan active service1William H. HastieOctober 21, 19492Thurgood MarshallOctober 5, 19613Wade H. McCreeSeptember 7, 19664Spottswood W. Robinson IIINovember 3, 196641 more rows
Clarence ThomasClarence Thomas, (born June 23, 1948, Pinpoint, near Savannah, Georgia, U.S.), associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1991, the second African American to serve on the court.
Clarence Thomas (born June 23, 1948) is an American judge who serves as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was nominated by President George H. W....Clarence ThomasAssumed office October 23, 1991Nominated byGeorge H. W. BushPreceded byThurgood Marshall28 more rows
Sandra Day O'ConnorAs the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States, Sandra Day O'Connor became an inspiration to millions.
Ketanji Brown Jackson has been confirmed as the first African-American woman to serve as a justice of the United States Supreme Court.
The 53-47 final vote tally showed bipartisan support for Jackson, with three Republicans joining all Democrats to elevate the 51-year-old federal judge to a lifetime appointment. Jackson is President Joe Biden's first Supreme Court nominee.
This was is in the Cathedral Parish Archives in St. Augustine, Florida, thirteen years before more enslaved Africans were brought to the English colony at Jamestown in 1619. William Tucker, the first Black child born (recorded) in the American colonies, was baptized on January 3, 1624, in Jamestown, Virginia.
Since then, only two other non-white justices have been appointed: Marshall's African-American successor, Clarence Thomas, in 1991, and Latina Justice Sonia Sotomayor in 2009.
West v. BarnesThe first cases reached the Supreme Court during its second year, and the Justices handed down their first opinion on August 3, 1791 in the case of West v. Barnes. During its first decade of existence, the Supreme Court rendered some significant decisions and established lasting precedents.
Sources. Thurgood Marshall—perhaps best known as the first African American Supreme Court justice—played an instrumental role in promoting racial equality during the civil rights movement. As a practicing attorney, Marshall argued a record-breaking 32 cases before the Supreme Court, winning 29 of them.
As a practicing attorney, Marshall argued a record-breaking 32 cases before the Supreme Court, winning 29 of them. In fact, Marshall represented and won more cases before the high court than any other person.
Marshall decided to attend Howard University Law School, where he became a protégé of the well-known dean, Charles Hamilton Houston, who encouraged students to use the law as a means for social transformation. In 1933, Marshall received his law degree and was ranked first in his class.
Personally, Marshall suffered a great loss when Vivian, his wife of 25 years, died of cancer in 1955. Shortly after her death, Marshall married Cecilia Suyat, and the couple went on to have two sons together.
His father, William Marshall, was a railroad porter, and his mother, Norma, was a teacher. After he completed high school in 1925, Marshall attended Lincoln University in Chester County, Pennsylvania. Just before he graduated, he married his first wife, ...
Board of Education of Topeka (1954): This landmark case was considered Marshall’s greatest victory as a civil-rights lawyer. A group of Black parents whose children were required to attend segregated schools filed a class-action lawsuit.
Life as a Lawyer. In 1935, Marshall’s first major court victory came in Murray v. Pearson, when he, alongside his mentor Houston, successfully sued the University of Maryland for denying a Black applicant admission to its law school because of his race.
Thurgood Marshall. Thurgood Marshall may have been inspired to become a lawyer after pulling a prank in high school. As punishment, his principal made Marshall read the U.S. Constitution, which outlines the rights all Americans should have.
Supreme Court that black children should be allowed to attend Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Before he was a Supreme Court justice, Thurgood Marshall argued cases like this in front of the court.
But probably his best known case was Brown vs. Board of Education, which challenged school segregation, when white and Black students are forced to go to separate schools.
The justices agreed with Marshall, and in 1954 school segregation was abolished. Desegregation happened slowly, but Marshall kept fighting. Then in 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him as the first African-American justice to serve on the Supreme Court.
Thurgood Marshall, who was born on July 2, 1908, was the first African American to be appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, the highest court in the country. Photograph by Stock Montage / Getty Images. Please be respectful of copyright.
Thomas dissented in Raich, again arguing for the Commerce Clause 's original meaning. Thomas and Scalia rejected the notion of a Dormant Commerce Clause, also known as the "Negative Commerce Clause". That doctrine bars state commercial regulation even if Congress has not yet acted on the matter.
In all, Thomas received the votes of 41 Republicans and 11 Democrats, while 46 Democrats and two Republicans voted to reject his nomination.
Thomas has consistently supported narrowing the court's interpretation of the constitution's Interstate Commerce Clause (often simply called the "Commerce Clause") to limit federal power , though he has broadly interpreted states' sovereign immunity from lawsuits under the clause.
The Senate confirmed Thomas by a vote of 52–48. Supreme Court experts describe Thomas's jurisprudence as textualist, stressing the original meaning of the United States Constitution and statutes. He is also, along with fellow justice Neil Gorsuch, an advocate of natural law.
On average, from 1994 to 2004, Scalia and Thomas had an 87% voting alignment, the highest on the court, followed by Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter 's (86%). Scalia's and Thomas's agreement rate peaked in 1996, at 98%. By 2004, other pairs of justices were more closely aligned than Scalia and Thomas.
After asking a question during a death penalty case on February 22, 2006, Thomas did not ask another question from the bench for more than 10 years, until February 29, 2016, about a response to a question regarding whether persons convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence should be barred permanently from firearm possession. He also had a nearly seven-year streak of not speaking at all during oral arguments, finally breaking that silence on January 14, 2013, when he, a Yale Law graduate, was understood to have joked either that a law degree from Yale or from Harvard may be proof of incompetence. Thomas took a more active role in questioning when the Supreme Court shifted to holding teleconferenced arguments in May 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic; before that, he spoke in 32 of the roughly 2,400 arguments since 1991.
At the conclusion of the committee's confirmation hearings, and while the Senate was debating whether to give final approval to Thomas's nomination, an FBI interview with Anita Hill was leaked to the press. As a result, on October 8 the final vote was postponed and the confirmation hearings were reopened. It was only the third time in the Senate's history that such an action was taken, and the first since 1925, when Harlan F. Stone 's nomination was recommitted to the Judiciary Committee.