Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993)

Summary Label

Thurgood Marshall was a civil rights activist who also worked as a lawyer. He was later appointed to serve on the United States Supreme Court, serving as the first African American on the court.

Name

Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993)

Date of Birth

2 July 1908

Date of Death

24 January 1993

State Assigned Gender

Male

Hometown or Region

Baltimore, Maryland

Freedom Status

Free

Occupation

Lawyer & Supreme Court Justice

Biography

First African American U.S. Supreme Court Justice

Thurgood Marshall is renowned for being the first African American to serve as a Supreme Court Justice, but his other accomplishments are not as widely known. Marshall was born on July 2nd, 1908 in Baltimore, Maryland. After graduating from Howard Law School in 1933, Marshall began working as a lawyer for the NAACP just three years later. Two years after this, he was appointed as the lead chair for the organization's legal team. Perhaps his most famous case was Brown v. Board of Education, which he argued and eventually won in 1954. The success and notoriety of this case jumpstarted Marshall’s already promising career. A few years later in 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him to be a Justice of the Supreme Court. After serving on the court for 24 years, he retired in 1991 and died just two years later in January of 1993.

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Student Researcher

Eloise Bradford