Thurgood Marshall

Thurgood Marshall, born Thoroughgood Marshall on July 2, 1908, in Baltimore, Maryland, was a lawyer and the first African American to serve as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, a position he held from 1967 to 1991. Before his time on the bench, he led the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and became a key figure in the fight to end racial segregation in public schools. He argued 32 civil rights cases before the Supreme Court, winning 29 of them. His most famous victory came in 1954 with *Brown v. Board of Education*, which overturned the separate but equal doctrine and declared segregation in public education unconstitutional. President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him to the Supreme Court in 1967.

Marshall grew up in Baltimore, the son of Norma, an elementary school teacher, and William Canfield Marshall, a waiter. The family briefly moved to New York for better work but returned to Baltimore when Thurgood was six. As a child, he was energetic and often in trouble; his father, who enjoyed following court cases, would take him to observe legal proceedings. Marshall later credited his father with turning him into a lawyer by teaching him to argue and defend every point. He graduated with honors from the Colored High and Training School in 1925, then attended Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, the oldest historically Black college in the U.S. There, he was suspended for two weeks after a hazing incident but earned good grades and led the debate team to many wins. His classmates included poet Langston Hughes. After graduating with honors in 1930 with a degree in American literature and philosophy, he applied to Howard University School of Law because the all-white University of Maryland Law School would not admit him. At Howard, he was mentored by Charles Hamilton Houston, who urged students to become "social engineers" using law to fight for civil rights. Marshall graduated first in his class in 1933 and passed the Maryland bar that year.

Marshall opened a law practice in Baltimore, but it struggled financially because he spent much of his time on community work. He volunteered with the local NAACP branch. In 1935, he and Houston sued the University of Maryland on behalf of Donald Gaines Murray, a Black applicant rejected from the law school due to his race. In *Murray v. Pearson*, Judge Eugene O'Dunne ordered Murray admitted, and the Maryland Court of Appeals affirmed, ruling that the rejection violated equal protection. Marshall soon joined Houston at the NAACP in New York, working on the segregation case *Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada*. When Houston returned to Washington, Marshall replaced him as special counsel and later became director-counsel of the newly formed NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. He took part in many landmark Supreme Court civil rights cases, including *Smith v. Allwright*, *Morgan v. Virginia*, *Shelley v. Kraemer*, *McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents*, *Sweatt v. Painter*, *Brown*, and *Cooper v. Aaron*. His strategy in desegregation cases often relied on sociological data to prove that segregation was inherently unequal.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed Marshall to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, where he favored a broad interpretation of constitutional protections. Four years later, President Johnson made him U.S. Solicitor General. In 1967, Johnson nominated him to replace Justice Tom C. Clark on the Supreme Court; despite opposition from Southern senators, he was confirmed by a 69–11 vote. During the liberal Warren Court era, Marshall was often in the majority, but as President Richard Nixon’s appointments made the Court more conservative, he frequently dissented. His closest ally on the Court was Justice William J. Brennan Jr., and they voted together in most cases.

Marshall developed a "sliding-scale" approach to the Equal Protection Clause, urging courts to use a flexible balancing test rather than a rigid tier-based analysis. He strongly opposed the death penalty, viewing it as cruel and unusual punishment; he and Brennan dissented in over 1,400 cases where the majority refused to review a death sentence. He supported a robust interpretation of the First Amendment in cases like *Stanley v. Georgia* and backed abortion rights in *Roe v. Wade* and other rulings. Marshall retired from the Supreme Court in 1991, replaced by Clarence Thomas. He died in 1993.