Quick Facts
- NAME: Thurgood Marshall
- OCCUPATION: Civil Rights Activist, Legal Professional
- BIRTH DATE: July 02, 1908
- DEATH DATE: January 24, 1993
- EDUCATION: Frederick Douglass High School in Baltimore, Lincoln University, Howard University School of Law
- PLACE OF BIRTH: Baltimore, Maryland
- PLACE OF DEATH: Bethesda, Maryland
Best Known For
Thurgood Marshall declared racial segregation in schools unconstitutional with the Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.
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Thurgood Marshall, the crusading attorney and civil rights activist who led the fight against school desegregation, became the first African-American to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Thurgood Marshall - Mini Bio
Thurgood Marshall was the first African-American to serve on the United States Supreme Court. He was also one of the most effective Civil Rights crusaders of the 20th Century.
Thurgood Marshall. (2012). Biography.com. Retrieved 10:01, Feb 08, 2012 from http://www.biography.com/people/thurgood-marshall-9400241
Thurgood Marshall [Internet]. 2012. http://www.biography.com/people/thurgood-marshall-9400241, February 08
" Thurgood Marshall." 2012. Biography.com 08 Feb 2012, 10:01 http://www.biography.com/people/thurgood-marshall-9400241
' Thurgood Marshall', Biography.com,(2012) http://www.biography.com/people/thurgood-marshall-9400241 [accessed Feb 08, 2012]
" Thurgood Marshall," Biography.com, http://www.biography.com/people/thurgood-marshall-9400241 (accessed Feb 08, 2012).
Thurgood Marshall [Internet]. Biography.com; 2012 [cited 2012 Feb 08]. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/thurgood-marshall-9400241.
Thurgood Marshall, http://www.biography.com/people/thurgood-marshall-9400241 (last visited Feb 08, 2012).
Thurgood Marshall, http://www.biography.com/people/thurgood-marshall-9400241 (last visited Feb 08, 2012).
Synopsis
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Profile
(born July 2, 1908, Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.—died January 24, 1993, Bethesda) lawyer, civil rights activist, and associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (1967–91), the first African American member of the Supreme Court. As an attorney, he successfully argued before the U.S. Supreme Court the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), which declared unconstitutional racial segregation in American public schools.Marshall was the son of William Canfield Marshall, a railroad porter and a steward at an all-white country club, and Norma Williams Marshall, an elementary school teacher. He graduated with honours from Lincoln University (Pennsylvania) in 1930. 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. At Howard he was the protégé of Charles Hamilton Houston, who encouraged Marshall and other law students to view the law as a vehicle for social change.
Upon his graduation from Howard, Marshall began the private practice of law in Baltimore. Among his first legal victories was Murray v. Pearson (1935), in which Marshall successfully sued the University of Maryland for denying an African American applicant admission to its law school simply 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.
Throughout the 1940s and '50s Marshall distinguished himself as one of the country's top lawyers, winning 29 of the 32 cases that he argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. Among them were cases in which the court declared unconstitutional a Southern state's exclusion of African American voters from primary elections (Smith v. Allwright [1944]), state judicial enforcement of racial “restrictive covenants” in housing (Shelley v. Kraemer [1948]), and “separate but equal” facilities for African American professionals and graduate students in state universities (Sweatt v. Painter and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents [both 1950]). Without a doubt, however, it was his victory before the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that established his reputation as a formidable and creative legal opponent and an advocate of social change. Indeed, students of constitutional law still examine the oral arguments of the case and the ultimate decision of the court from both a legal
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