Marshall, Thurgood (1908–1993)

John J. White

Thurgood Marshall was a civil rights lawyer and later U.S. Supreme Court associate justice. He was known for his high success rate in cases he argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, most notably Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka , which declared school segregation unconstitutional. The first African American to serve on the Supreme Court, Marshall compiled a liberal record that included support for abortion rights, affirmative action, court-ordered school desegregation, and opposition to the death penalty. Marshall was born in Baltimore in 1908. He graduated from the historically Black Lincoln University in Pennsylvania but was discouraged from applying to the University of Maryland Law School because of his race. He attended Howard University Law School, where he studied with the new dean, Charles Hamilton Houston. It was Houston's contention that the key to civil rights for African Americans lay in the development of a cadre of well-trained African ...

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