"Biography of Thurgood Marshall, First Black Supreme Court Justice." ThoughtCo, Jan. 7, 2022, thoughtco.com/thurgood-marshall-1779842.
Then, in 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson named Marshall the first Black solicitor general, designated to represent the federal government in Supreme Court cases. Though Marshall regularly appeared before the Supreme Court, no Black man, and no person of color, had ever been nominated to serve as a justice.
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.
Jennifer Rosenberg is a historian and writer who specializes in 20th-century history. Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908–January 24, 1993), whose great-grandparents were enslaved, was the first Black justice appointed to the United States Supreme Court, where he served from 1967 to 1991.
Justice Thurgood MarshallJustice Thurgood Marshall: First African American Supreme Court Justice. On June 13, 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson nominated distinguished civil rights lawyer Thurgood Marshall to be the first African American justice to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States.
Thurgood MarshallThurgood Marshall was the first African American to serve as a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. He joined the Court in 1967, the year this photo was taken. On October 2, 1967, Thurgood Marshall took the judicial oath of the U.S. Supreme Court, becoming the first Black person to serve on the Court.
Thomas is the second African American to serve on the Court, after Marshall. Since 2018, Thomas has been the longest-serving member of the Court with a tenure of over 30 years....Clarence ThomasAssumed office October 23, 1991Nominated byGeorge H. W. BushPreceded byThurgood Marshall28 more rows
Only two African American justices, Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas, have served on the court so far. The first appointment -- when Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Marshall -- wasn't until 1967. When Johnson announced the nomination, he said he thought it was the right thing to do and the right time to do it.
Marshall, in 1940, won the first of his Supreme Court victories in Chambers v. Florida, in which the Court overturned the convictions of four Black men who had been beaten and coerced into confessing to a murder. For another case, Marshall was sent to Dallas to represent a Black man who had been summoned for jury duty and who had been dismissed ...
It did not help that Marshall opened his practice in the midst of the Great Depression .
Overall, between 1940 and 1961, Marshall won 29 of the 32 cases he argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. Brown v. Board of Education. In 1951, a court decision in Topeka, Kansas became the stimulus for Thurgood Marshall's most significant case.
For another case, Marshall was sent to Dallas to represent a Black man who had been summoned for jury duty and who had been dismissed when court officers realized he was not White. Marshall met with Texas governor James Allred, whom he successfully persuaded that Black Americans had a right to serve on a jury.
Board of Education, a major step in the fight to desegregate American schools. The 1954 Brown decision is considered one of the most significant civil rights victories of the 20th century.
After graduating from Lincoln in 1930, Marshall enrolled at Howard University Law School, a historically Black college in Washington, D.C., where his brother Aubrey was attending medical school. Marshall's first choice had been the University of Maryland Law School, but he was refused admission because of his race.
Patricia Daniels. Updated January 23, 2020. Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908–January 24, 1993), whose great-grandparents were enslaved, was the first Black justice appointed to the United States Supreme Court, where he served from 1967 to 1991. Earlier in his career, Marshall was a pioneering civil rights attorney who successfully argued ...
In 1967, following the retirement of Justice Tom C. Clark, President Johnson appointed Marshall, the first Black justice, to the U.S. Supreme Court, proclaiming it was “the right thing to do, the right time to do it, and the right man and the right place.”
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.
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.
Chambers v. Florida (1940): Marshall successfully defended four convicted Black men who were coerced by police into confessing to murder. Smith v. Allwright (1944): In this decision, the Supreme Court overturned a Texas state law that authorized the use of whites-only primary elections in certain Southern states.
In the case of Furman v. Georgia (1972), Marshall and Brennan argued that the death penalty was unconstitutional in all circumstances. The justice was also part of the majority vote that ruled in favor of abortion in the landmark Roe v. Wade (1973) case.
Shortly after this legal success, Marshall became a staff lawyer for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP) and was eventually named chief of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
Davis where a Texas jury convicted Daniel Buck of capital murder. During his trial, Buck’s lawyer asked a psychologist for an opinion of Buck’s likelihood to commit acts of violence in the future. The psychologist’s report concluded that Buck was unlikely to commit acts of violence in the future and that, statistically, Buck was more likely to commit acts of violence because of his race. The report read: “Race. Black: Increased probability.” ( LexisNexis ).
Leondra Kruger currently serves as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of California. She obtained her Bachelors from Harvard University and her Juris Doctor from Yale. While at Yale, Kruger was the Editor-In-Chief for the Yale Law Journal. She started her career at a corporate litigation law firm prior to clerking for Judge David Tatel on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and later for Justice John Paul Stevens of the Supreme Court of the United States.