Who was the first African American Supreme Court Justice who also argued the Brown v Board of Education?

Answer 1

Justice Thurgood Marshall (1967-1991)

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, (1954) was a landmark Supreme Court case that addressed the unconstitutionality of segregation in education, held to be a 14th Amendment violation of the Equal Protection Clause. When the Court, lead by Chief Justice, unanimously held in favor of the plaintiff, the ruling overturned the Court's decision in Plessy v. Furguson, which declared "separate but equal" to be constitutional.

Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American Justice appointed to the US Supreme Court, was Chief Counsel for the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, a social activism group) in 1954, and argued Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka before the high court twice -- once in 1952 and once in 1953.

This unusual occurrence was the result of the Court requiring all the lawyers involved in Brown, which the Justices compiled from five separate, but similar, cases, to submit individual briefs answering five questions about whether the intent of the 14th Amendment was to include segregation in education.

Although Marshall is best known for his leadership in Brown, it was not the first case he presented to the Supreme Court. In 1940, Marshall successfully argued Chambers v. Florida, 309 U.S. 227 (1940), a case involving criminal confessions extracted under duress, a violation of the 5th Amendment Due Process Clause.

Marshall argued a total of 32 cases before the Supreme Court and won 29 times.

President Lyndon Johnson nominated Marshall as an Associate Justice to the Supreme Court in 1967, and he was confirmed by a Senate vote of 69-11 on August 31. Marshall served from 1967-1991, and died on January 24, 1993, at the age of 84.