Thurgood Marshall

• Born: 2 July 1908
• Birthplace: Baltimore, Maryland
• Died: 24 January 1993 (heart failure)
• Best Known As: The first African-American justice of the U.S. Supreme Court

Attorney Thurgood Marshall led the civil rights case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka to a successful hearing at the Supreme Court of the United States in 1954. He became the court's first African-American justice 13 years later. The descendant of slaves, Marshall graduated from all-black Lincoln University in Pennsylvania in 1930, then received a law degree from Howard University in 1933. He opened his own law practice in Baltimore and became known as a lawyer who would speak up for the rights of African-Americans; this led him to a job with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1936. He spent more than two decades with the NAACP, gaining his greatest fame for the case of Brown v. Board of Education from 1952-54. When the Supreme Court ruled in 1954 that "Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal," Marshall and the NAACP won a great victory for civil rights. Marshall was nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals (Second Circuit) in 1961, then appointed to the post of solicitor general in 1965 by President Lyndon Johnson. Marshall was appointed to the Supreme Court itself in 1967, where he served for 24 years before he retired in 1991. Marshall, known as a liberal throughout his tenure, was replaced on the court by conservative African-American Clarence Thomas (appointed by President George H. W. Bush). Marshall died of heart failure two years later.

Texas Southern University School of Law was renamed the Thurgood Marshall School of Law in his honor in 1976... Marshall replaced Tom C. Clark on the Supreme Court... Marshall was married twice: to the former Vivian Burey (from 1929 until her death in 1955) and to Cecilia Suyat (from 1955 until his death)... Marshall is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

(b. Baltimore, Md., 2 July 1908; d. Washington, D.C., 24 Jan. 1993; interred Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Va.), associate justice, 1967–1991. Marshall, great‐grandson of a slave and the son of a dining car waiter and a schoolteacher, became the first African‐American justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Marshall earned his B.A. from Lincoln University in 1930, then entered Howard University Law School, where he studied under Charles Hamilton Houston, the dean credited with transforming Howard into a laboratory for civil rights litigation.

After Marshall graduated first in his class from Howard in 1933, Houston enlisted him to help with the civil rights battles being waged by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Working full time, first as special counsel for the NAACP and then as director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Marshall masterminded the litigation strategy that challenged racial oppression in education, housing, transportation, electoral politics, and criminal justice. Ultimately, Marshall was responsible for achieving twenty‐nine Supreme Court victories, including numerous landmark cases such as Smith v. Allwright (1944), Shelley v. Kraemer (1948), and Brown v. Board of Education (1954), in which the Court finally concluded that the doctrine of separate but equal was inherently unequal and unconstitutional.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy nominated Marshall to be circuit judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. After a lengthy, hostile battle waged by Southern senators, Marshall was finally confirmed. In his four years on the circuit, Marshall wrote several important opinions, including one applying the Double Jeopardy Clause to the states, a position the Supreme Court later adopted in Benton v. Maryland (1969), with Marshall writing for the Court. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson named Marshall to be the first African‐American solicitor general of the United States.

Two years later, Johnson appointed Marshall to be associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, to occupy the seat vacated by Tom C. Clark. During his long tenure, Marshall wrote many significant decisions in a wide variety of fields, including federal jurisdiction, federal preemption, antitrust, and the rights of Native Americans. But Marshall's most significant contributions were in constitutional law, where he made his mark with powerful majority opinions as well as passionate dissents.

Among Marshall's most noted First Amendment opinions were Stanley v. Georgia (1969), which held that individuals have a right to possess obscene materials in their own homes; Police Department of Chicago v. Mosley (1972), which established the important principle that government may not constitutionally favor some types of speech over others; and Linmark Associates, Inc. v. Township of Willingboro (1977), which held that a municipality could not constitutionally ban the use of “for sale” signs simply because it feared their use might contribute to “blockbusting” and “white flight.”

Marshall's contributions in matters of equal protection came primarily through dissenting opinions. Two powerful dissents, in Dandridge v. Williams (1970) and San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez (1973), criticized the rigidity of two‐tiered equal protection analysis in which classifications based on race and other suspect categories were subjected to strict scrutiny while all other classifications had to be merely “rational.” Marshall proposed a more flexible, “sliding scale” theory under which courts would examine the nature of the group, the extent to which it previously had been subjected to discrimination, and the importance of the interests affected by the legislation. Although the Court did not adopt Marshall's theory, his consistent criticism seems to have prodded the Court to somewhat greater flexibility.

In addition, Marshall's passionate views on affirmative action were powerfully articulated. In a 1986 speech to the Second Circuit, Marshall urged Americans to “[F]ace the simple fact that there are groups in every community which are daily paying the cost of the history of American injustice. The argument against affirmative action is … an argument in favor of leaving that cost to lie where it falls. Our fundamental sense of fairness, particularly as it is embodied in the guarantee of equal protection under the laws, requires us to make an effort to see that those costs are shared equitably while we continue to work for the eradication of the consequences of discrimination. Otherwise, we must admit to ourselves that so long as the lingering effects of inequality are with us, the burden will be borne by those who are least able to pay.”

These views may well have influenced a majority of the Court to conclude in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), and most recently again in *Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), that it is constitutionally permissible for institutions of higher education to consider race on a limited basis in order to achieve a diverse student population.

Probably the most personally agonizing subject for Marshall was capital punishment. When the Court upheld revised death‐penalty statutes in Gregg v. Georgia (1976), Marshall began the practice of dissenting in every death penalty case, including each time the Court denied a petition for certiorari in a case involving the death penalty.

Marshall's life experiences enabled him to make sure his colleagues always knew whose ox was being gored. He was never reticent to make his views known. When the country was enthusiastically celebrating the bicentennial of the Constitution in 1989, Marshall noted that, with its acceptance of slavery, the Constitution was initially defective. Credit for its present stature belongs, he observed in the Harvard Law Review in 1987, not to the framers but “to those present who refused to acquiesce in outdated notions of ‘liberty,’ ‘justice,’ and ‘equality,’ and who strived to better them. The true miracle of the Constitution,” observed Marshall, “was not the birth of the Constitution, but its life” (p. 5).

Bibliography

• Richard A. Kluger, Simple Justice (1976).
• Thurgood Marshall, Reflections on the Bicentennial of the United States Constitution, Harvard Law Review 101 (1987): 1–5.
• A Tribute to Justice Marshall, symposium in Harvard Blackletter Journal 6 (1989): 1–140

— Susan Low Bloch

Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993) was an American civil rights lawyer, solicitor general, and associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Thurgood Marshall was born on July 2, 1908, in Baltimore, Maryland, where his mother was a teacher and his father a headwaiter and country club steward. Parental qualities of thoroughness, excellence, justice, and equality, along with humility, pride, and aggressiveness, early impressed him. Marshall attended Lincoln University, where he received his bachelor's degree cum laude, and then enrolled in the law school at Howard University in 1930, from which he graduated magna cum laude in 1933. While at Howard he came under the influence of Charles Houston and the group of legal scholars who developed and perfected techniques and procedures for civil rights litigation.

Passing the Maryland bar in 1933, Marshall practiced in Baltimore until 1938, serving also as counsel for the Baltimore branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1935 he successfully attacked segregation and discrimination in education when he participated in the desegregation of the University of Maryland Law School (where he had been denied admission because of race). Marshall became director of the NAACP's Legal Defense and Education Fund in 1939. A year earlier he had been admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the fourth, fifth, and eighth circuits, and the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.

Winning 29 of the 32 civil rights cases which he and his aides argued before the Supreme Court (and sometimes threatened with death as he argued cases in the lower courts of some southern states), Marshall earned the reputation of "America's outstanding civil rights lawyer." Some of the important cases he argued, which became landmarks in the destruction of segregation, as well as constitutional precedents with their decisions, include Smith v. Allwright (1944), establishing the rights of African-Americans to vote in Democratic primary elections; Morgan v. Virginia (1946), outlawing the state's segregation policy as applied to interstate bus transportation; Shelley v. Kramer (1948), outlawing restrictive covenants in housing; and Sweatt v. Painter (1950), requiring admission of an African-American student to the University of Texas Law School. The most famous was Brown vs. Board of Education (1954), which outlawed segregation in public schools and for all practical purposes "sounded the death knell for all forms of legally sanctioned segregation."

The NAACP sent Marshall to Japan and Korea in 1951 to investigate complaints that African-American soldiers convicted by U. S. Army courts-martial had not received fair trials. His appeal arguments got the sentences of 22 of the 40 men reduced.

President John Kennedy nominated Marshall on Sept. 23, 1961, for judge of the Second Court of Appeals; he was confirmed by the Senate a year later after undergoing strenuous hearings. Three years later Marshall accepted President Lyndon Johnson's appointment as solicitor general. In this post Marshall successfully defended the United States in a number of important cases concerning industry. Of no little interest was the fact that through his office he now defended civil rights actions as advocate for the American people instead of (as in his NAACP days) as counsel strictly for African-Americans; however, he personally did not argue cases in which he had previously been involved.

In 1967 President Johnson nominated Marshall as associate justice to the U. S. Supreme Court. Marshall's nomination was strenuously opposed by several Southern senators on the Judiciary Committee but nevertheless he was confirmed by a vote of 69 to 11. He took his seat on October 2, 1967, and was the first African-American justice to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court.

During his nearly quarter-century on the Supreme Court, he remained a strong advocate of individual rights and never wavered in his devotion to ending discrimination. He formed a key part of the Court's progressive majority which voted to uphold a woman's right to abortion. His majority opinions covered such areas as ecology, the right of appeal of persons convicted of narcotic charges, failure to report for and submit to induction into the U. S. Armed Forces, obscenity, and the rights of Native Americans.

The Reagan-Bush years in the White House and the slow dwindling of the liberal influence on the Court was a time of sadness for Marshall. Always tart tongued, in 1987 Marshall dismissed President Reagan in an interview with Ebony as "the bottom" in terms of his commitment to black Americans. He later told the magazine: "I wouldn't do the job of dogcatcher for Ronald Reagan." There is no question that Marshall viewed the actions of the conservative Republican presidents as a throwback to the days when "we (African-Americans) didn't really have a chance." Marshall was keenly disappointed when his friend and liberal colleague, Justice William J. Brennan Jr., retired from the Court due to ill heath. Marshall vowed to serve until he was 110 and then die "shot by a jealous husband." However, suffering heart attacks, pneumonia, blood clots, and glaucoma, Marshall himself was forced by illness to give up his seat in 1991. He died in 1993 at the age of 84.

Justice Marshall had been born during Theodore Roosevelt's administration but lived to see African-Americans rise to positions of power and influence in America. To no small degree, the progress of black Americans toward equal opportunity turned upon the legal victories won by him. By his death, even in retirement, he had risen to the stature of mythic hero. His numerous honors included more than 20 honorary degrees from educational institutions in America and abroad. The University of Maryland Law School was named in his honor, as were a variety of elementary and secondary schools around the nation. During his life he received the NAACP's Spingarn Medal (1946), the Negro Newspaper Publisher Association's Russwurm Medal (1948), and the Living Makers of Negro History Award of the lota Phi Lambda Sorority (1950), and his name was inscribed on the honor roll of the Schomburg History Collection of New York for the advancement of race relations. He enjoyed the family life of his second wife and their two sons, Thurgood Jr. and John, who themselves pursued careers in public life. Marshall's first wife died in 1955. A little over 6 feet tall and dignified and solemn in manner, but endowed with a sense of humor, Marshall portrayed homely virtues and a deep reverence for God. Unique as his career was, it epitomized the potential of American democracy.

Further Reading

For periodical articles dealing with Marshall's life and career, see Newsweek (Sept. 21, 1987 and Aug. 6, 1990). Of the numerous books on Marshall's life and career, a well-received analysis was contained in the twin volumes Making Civil Rights Law: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court 1936-1961 (1994) and Making Constitutional Law: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court 1961-1991 (1997) by Mark V. Thusnet. An early biography of Marshall is Lewis H. Fenderson, ed., Thurgood Marshall (1969).

supreme court justice; lawyer

Personal Information

Born on July 2, 1908, in Baltimore, MD; died on January 24, 1993, in Washington, DC; son of William C. (a club steward) and Norma A. (a school teacher) Marshall; married Vivian Burey, 1929 (died, 1955); married Cecilia A. Suyat, 1955; children: (second marriage) Thurgood, Jr., John William
Education: Lincoln University, BA, 1930; Howard University Law School, LLB, 1933.
Politics: Democratic.
Memberships: American Bar Association; National Bar Association; Civil Liberties Union; Masonic Order.

Career

Admitted to the Maryland Bar, 1933; private law practice, Baltimore, 1933-38; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Assistant Special Counsel, 1936-38; NAACP, Special Counsel, 1938-50; NAACP, director of legal defense and education fund, 1940-46; 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, judge, 1961-65; Solicitor General for the United States of America, 1965-67; United States Supreme Court justice, 1967-91.

Life's Work

United States Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall built a distinguished career fighting for the cause of civil rights and equal opportunity. Ebony dubbed Marshall "the most important Black man of this century--a man who rose higher than any Black person before him and who has had more effect on Black lives than any other person, Black or White." The first African-American to serve on the Supreme Court, Marshall stood alone as the Supreme Court's liberal conscience toward the end of his career, the last impassioned spokesman for a left-wing view on such causes as affirmative action, abolishment of the death penalty, and due process. His retirement in 1991 left the Court in the hands of more conservative justices.

Duke University professor John Hope Franklin told Ebony: "If you study the history of Marshall's career, the history of his rulings on the Supreme Court, even his dissents, you will understand that when he speaks, he is not speaking just for Black Americans but for Americans of all times. He reminds us constantly of the great promise this country has made of equality, and he reminds us that it has not been fulfilled. Through his life he has been a great watchdog, insisting that this nation live up to the Constitution."

Raised in Prosperous Home

Marshall's work on behalf of civil rights spanned five-and-a-half decades and included the history-making Brown vs. Board of Education ruling that led to integration of the nation's public schools in 1954. As an attorney for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Marshall fought to have blacks admitted to then-segregated state universities, challenged the armed services to offer equal treatment for black recruits, and even assured that blacks would have the right to serve on a jury. John Hope Franklin put it this way: "For Black people he holds special significance because it was Thurgood hellip; and a few others who told us we could get justice through interpretation of the law.... Marshall was at the head of these lawyers who told us to hold fast because they were going to get the law on our side. And they did."

Marshall was born on July 2, 1908, in Baltimore, Maryland, into modest but prosperous circumstances. His mother worked as a teacher in a segregated public elementary school, and his father was a steward at the staunchly all-white Gibson Island yacht club. Marshall's first name derives from a great-grandfather, Thoroughgood Marshall, who was brought to America from the Congo as a slave. Both of Thurgood Marshall's grandfathers owned grocery stores. The judge told Ebony that he rarely felt uncomfortable about his race while growing up in Baltimore. He lived in a nice home on Druid Hill Avenue and played with children of both races. He described himself as a "mediocre" student and a "cutup," whose punishment was often to read the United States Constitution out loud. By the time he graduated from high school, he knew it by heart.

In September of 1925, Marshall became a student at Lincoln University, near Philadelphia. He originally intended to study medicine and dentistry, but he changed to the humanities and began to consider a career in law. Williams notes that in college Marshall still was something of a cutup--"he was thrown out of the college twice for fraternity pranks." During his junior year, however, he married a student from the University of Pennsylvania, Vivian Burey.

Joined NAACP Staff

The relationship settled him down, and he graduated cum laude from Lincoln in 1930. From there he moved to Howard University in Washington, D.C., where he enrolled in the small, all-black law school. The course supervisor was Charles H. Houston, a demanding but inspiring instructor who instilled in his students a burning desire to change segregated society. Marshall graduated first in his class, earning his LLB in 1933. He was admitted to the Maryland Bar the same year.

Returning to Baltimore, Marshall began working as a private practice lawyer. Williams noted, however, that the young lawyer "still made time for the fight against segregation. Representing the local NAACP, he negotiated with White store owners who sold to Blacks but would not hire them." Marshall also took the case of a would-be law student who wanted to attend the all-white University of Maryland law school. The case against the university was Marshall's first big one. His former professor came to town to help him argue it, and the judge gave them a favorable ruling. Soon thereafter, Marshall was invited to join the NAACP's national office in New York City as an assistant special counsel. Two years later, in 1938, he became the head special counsel for the powerful organization.

"For the next 20 years," Williams wrote, "[Marshall] traveled the country using the Constitution to force state and federal courts to protect the rights of Black Americans. The work was dangerous, and Marshall frequently wondered if he might not end up dead or in the same jail holding those he was trying to defend." Marshall prepared cases against the University of Missouri and the University of Texas on behalf of black students. He petitioned the governor of Texas when a black was excluded from jury duty. During and after World War II, he was an outspoken opponent of the government detention of Japanese Americans, and in 1951 he investigated unfair court-martial practices aimed at blacks in the military in Korea and Japan. William H. Hastie, of the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals, told the New York Times: "Certainly no lawyer, and practically no member of the bench has Thurgood Marshall's grasp of the doctrine of law as it affects civil rights."

Helped End School Segregation

The limelight found Marshall in 1954, when he led the legal team that challenged public school segregation in the courts. The case advanced to the U.S. Supreme Court and resulted in a landmark ruling that ended a half-century of segregated schooling. Remembering those days when he worked on Brown vs. Board of Education, Marshall told Ebony that the Court's decision "probably did more than anything else to awaken the Negro from his apathy to demanding his right to equality." At the time, however, Marshall was an opponent of civil disobedience for blacks in the South, feeling that organized opposition might lead to white violence--as indeed it did.

Marshall's first wife died after a long illness in 1955. A year later, he married Cecilia Suyat, a secretary at the NAACP's New York office. The Brown vs. Board of Education ruling had made Marshall a national figure--he was known for some time as "Mr. Civil Rights"--and when Democrats took control of the White House, the ambitious attorney let it be known that he wanted a judgeship.

Eventually, after much opposition from Southern senators and even from Robert Kennedy, Marshall was named to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 1961. As the civil rights movement gained ground in the 1960s, so did Marshall. In 1965 he was given the post of United States solicitor general, a position in which he represented the government before the Supreme Court. His most important case during these years was the one leading to the adoption of the Miranda rule, which requires policemen to inform suspects of their rights.

Named to Supreme Court

Against stiff opposition even in his own (Democratic) party, President Lyndon Johnson nominated Marshall to the Supreme Court in 1967. Marshall's nomination was opposed most violently by four Southern senators on the Judiciary Committee, but nevertheless he was confirmed by a vote of 69 to 11. He was sworn in and took his seat on October 2, 1967, and he stayed until his failing health forced him to retire in 1991. Williams wrote: "Throughout his time on the court, Marshall has remained a strong advocate of individual rights.... He has remained a conscience on the bench, never wavering in his devotion to ending discrimination."

Marshall was known as the most tart-tongued member of the court. He was never reticent with his opinions, especially on matters affecting the civil rights agenda. Former justice William Brennan, long Marshall's liberal ally on the court, told Ebony: "The only time Thurgood may make people uncomfortable, and perhaps it's when they should be made uncomfortable, is when he'll take off in a given case that he thinks ... is another expression of racism."

It came as no surprise therefore that judge Marshall was a vocal critic of both Republican presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush. Few justices have been known to speak out on political matters, and for years Marshall himself refused to grant interviews. Near the end of his service to the Court, however, Marshall did speak out when he was stung by court reversals on minority set-aside programs and affirmative action. In 1987 Marshall dismissed Reagan as "the bottom" in terms of his commitment to black Americans. He later told Ebony: "I wouldn't do the job of dogcatcher for Ronald Reagan." Marshall later heaped equal vitriol on the Bush administration after the president vetoed an important civil rights bill. The justice told Newsweek that the actions of Bush and Reagan reflect a return to the days "when we [blacks] really didn't have a chance."

Liberal Voice in Changing Court

During the more than a decade that Republicans controlled the White House, one by one, retiring judges were replaced with more conservative successors. For many years Marshall and Brennan teamed as the high court's true liberals, and Marshall was gravely disappointed when his colleague was forced to retire. Marshall remained the lone outspoken liberal on the nine-member court, suffering through heart attacks, pneumonia, blood clots, and glaucoma. Marshall steadfastly refused to consider stepping down before absolutely necessary because, as he told Ebony, "I have a lifetime appointment and I intend to serve it. I expect to die at 110, shot by a jealous husband." One of Marshall's law clerks told People magazine that Marshall felt compelled to remain on the court, perhaps at the expense of his health, because he saw himself as the champion of the underdog. "He's the conscience of the Court," the clerk said. Despite his predictions, Marshall's failing health finally impeded his ability to perform his duties. He retired in 1991 and died of heart failure on January 24, 1993.

Marshall lived with his wife near Washington, D.C., until his death in 1993. Marshalls' oldest son, Thurgood, Jr. is an attorney on Senator Edward Kennedy's Judiciary Committee staff. The younger son, John, is a Virginia state policeman.

Marshall will be well remembered. Marshall served as a strong leader during the civil rights movement, as an architect of the legal strategy that ended racial segregation, and as the first African-American Justice of the Supreme Court. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist referred to the words inscribed above the front entrance to the Supreme Court--"Equal Justice for All"--stating in his eulogy that, "Surely no one individual did more to make these words a reality than Thurgood Marshall."

Awards

Spingarn Medal from NAACP, 1946; Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, Horatio Alger Award; numerous honorary doctorate degrees.

Works

Selected writings

• Thurgood Marshall: His Speeches, Writings, Arguments, Opinions, and Reminiscences, Mark V. Tushnet, ed., Lawrence Hill Books, 2001.
• Supreme Justice: Speeches and Writings, J. Clay Smith, Jr., ed., University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003.

Further Reading

Books

• Ball, Howard, Thurgood Marshall and the Persistence of Racism in America, Crown, 1998.
• Gibson, Karen Bush, Thurgood Marshall, Bridgestone, 2002.
• Williams, Juan, Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary, Time, 1998.

• Ebony, May 1990.
• Newsweek, September 21, 1987; August 6, 1990.
• New York Times, November 23, 1946; April 6, 1951; January 25, 1993.
• People, July 7, 1986.

— Mark Kram and Sara Pendergast

For more information on Thurgood Marshall, visit Britannica.com.

• Born: July 2, 1908, Baltimore, Md.
• Education: Lincoln University, B.A., 1930; Howard University Law School, LL.B., 1933
• Previous government service: judge, Second Circuit Court of Appeals, 1961–65; U.S. solicitor general, 1965–67
• Appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson June 13, 1967; replaced Tom C. Clark, who retired
• Supreme Court term: confirmed by the Senate Aug. 30, 1967, by a 69–11 vote; retired Oct. 1, 1991
• Died: Jan. 24, 1993, Bethesda, Md.

Thurgood Marshall, the great-grandson of a slave, was the first African-American justice of the Supreme Court. He began his historic career in 1933, as a civil rights lawyer for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1940 Marshall became head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. In this position, he led the NAACP's legal fight against racial segregation and denial of individual rights of black people. Marshall successfully argued 29 out of 32 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 1954 Thurgood Marshall achieved his biggest victory for the NAACP in Brown v. Board of Education. In this landmark case, Marshall convinced the Supreme Court to decide that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. This was the beginning of the eventual ending of state government laws that denied equal rights to black people.

In 1961 President John F. Kennedy appointed Marshall to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. In 1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson selected Marshall to be solicitor general of the United States, the top lawyer for the U.S. government in federal court cases. Marshall was the first African American to serve as the solicitor general and to argue cases for the government at the Supreme Court.

During his 24 years on the Court, Justice Marshall wrote many opinions on various issues pertaining to federal jurisdiction, antitrust laws, and civil rights. He wrote numerous dissenting opinions about equal protection of the laws, the rights of minorities, and capital punishment. He strongly opposed the death penalty, which in his opinion was a violation of the 8th Amendment prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishment.” Throughout his long career in law, Thurgood Marshall was an outspoken advocate for the rights and opportunities of minorities, especially for African Americans and poor people.

During his final years on the Court, Justice Marshall often wrote strong dissents to call attention to his views about unmet needs for social justice. He opposed the conservative tendencies of the Court during the 1980s and was a staunch ally of Justice William Brennan in arguing for liberal positions. He remained on the Court only one term after Brennan retired, citing declining health as a major reason for his retirement. Marshall's death in 1993 brought an outpouring of praise for his remarkable career.

See also Brown v. Board of Education; Civil rights; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

Sources

• Lisa Aldred, Thurgood Marshall (New York: Chelsea House, 1990).
• Carl T. Rowan, Dream Makers, Dream Breakers: The World of Thurgood Marshall (Boston: Little, Brown, 1993).
• Mark V. Tushnet, Making Civil Rights Law: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court, 1936–1961 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993)

(1908-1993), associate justice, U.S. Supreme Court, and civil rights advocate. Marshall earned an important place in American history on the basis of two accomplishments. First, as legal counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (naacp), he guided the litigation that destroyed the legal underpinnings of Jim Crow segregation. Second, as an associate justice of the Supreme Court--the nation's first black justice--he crafted a distinctive jurisprudence marked by uncompromising liberalism, unusual attentiveness to practical considerations beyond the formalities of law, and an indefatigable willingness to dissent.

Marshall was born in Baltimore, Maryland, attended that city's racially segregated public schools, and graduated from Lincoln University. He received his law degree from Howard University where he came under the influence of Charles Hamilton Houston, dean of the law school and a pioneer in the use of litigation as a mode of social reform.

Between 1934 and 1961, as an attorney for the naacp, Marshall traveled throughout the United States, representing all manner of clients whenever a dispute involved questions of racial justice--from trials for common crimes to appellate advocacy raising the most intricate matters of constitutional law. His exploits earned him the appellation "Mr. Civil Rights." He argued thirty-two cases before the Supreme Court, prevailing in twenty-nine of them. These cases include Smith v. Allwright (1944), which invalidated the so-called white primary (the practice of barring blacks from the Democratic party primary in a state where that party controlled state government), Shelley v. Kraemer (1948), which prohibited state courts from enforcing racially restrictive real estate covenants, and Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, which invalidated state-enforced racial segregation in the public schools.

The next stage in Marshall's career consisted of a series of high-level appointments. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed him to the U.S. Court of Appeals. In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him solicitor general, another racial "first." And in 1967, President Johnson appointed Marshall to the Supreme Court, declaring that it was "the right thing to do, the right time to do it, the right man and the right place."

Justice Marshall was an outspoken liberalon a Court dominated by conservatives. In his twenty-four year tenure, he voted to uphold gender and racial affirmative action policies in every case in which they were challenged. He dissented in every case in which the Supreme Court failed to overturn a death sentence and opposed all efforts to narrow or burden the right of women to obtain abortions. No justice has been more libertarian in terms of opposing government regulation of speech or private sexual conduct. Nor has any justice been more egalitarian in terms of advancing a view of the Constitution that imposes positive duties on government to provide certain important benefits to people--education, legal services, access to courts--regardless of their ability to pay for them.

Bibliography:

Randall Bland, Private Pressure on Public Law: The Legal Career of Justice Thurgood Marshall (1973); A Tribute to Justice Thurgood Marshall, special issue, Harvard Blackletter Journal 6 (Spring 1989).

Author:

Randall Kennedy

See also Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka ; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; Supreme Court.

A judge of the twentieth century; the first black appointed to the Supreme Court. Before his appointment to the Court in 1967, Marshall served as a lawyer for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and in 1954 he argued before the Court against segregation in the case of Brown versus Board of Education. As a Supreme Court justice, he was known for his consistently liberal record and for advocating the rights of women and minorities.

Thurgood Marshall, the first African American to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, saw law as a catalyst for social change. For nearly sixty years as a lawyer and a jurist, Marshall worked to dismantle the system of segregation and improve the legal and social position of minorities.

Marshall was born July 8, 1908, in Baltimore, the son of a Pullman porter and a schoolteacher. He was a graduate of Lincoln University, a small, all-black college in Pennsylvania, and Howard University Law School in Washington, D.C. At Howard, Marshall excelled under the guidance of Vice Dean CharlesHamilton Houston, the first African American to win a case before the U.S. Supreme Court. Houston encouraged his students to become not just lawyers but "social engineers" who could use the legal system to improve society. Marshall graduated first in his law class in 1933.

Marshall's attendance at predominantly black Howard University illustrates the barriers faced by African Americans during the early twentieth century. Although Marshall wished to attend law school at the University of Maryland (a public institution in his hometown of Baltimore), he was prohibited by law from doing so because of his race. The injustice helped set Marshall on a course of opposing all forms of official segregation that denied equal opportunities to African Americans.

After law school, Marshall set up a practice in Baltimore, representing indigent clients in civil rights cases. In 1936 his mentor Houston offered him a position with the National Association for the Advancement ofColored People (NAACP), and in 1940, Marshall became director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, a position he held until 1961. Determined to eliminate segregation, Marshall coordinated a nationwide campaign to integrate higher education. He filed several successful lawsuits against public graduate and professional schools that refused to accept African American students. These suits paved the way for similar cases at the high school and elementary level. Marshall also journeyed throughout the deep South, traveling fifty thousand miles a year to fight Jim CrowLaws (a series of laws that provided for racial segregation in the South) and represent criminal defendants.

Marshall argued thirty-two cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and won twenty-nine of them. No doubt his most famous and far-reaching triumph before the High Court was Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S. Ct. 686, 98 L. Ed. 873 (1954). In that case, the father of African American student Linda Brown sued the school board of Topeka, Kansas, over its segregation policy. Brown was required by law to attend an all African American school several blocks from her home even though an all white public school was located in her own neighborhood. Under Kansas law, cities of more than fifteen thousand people, such as Topeka, could choose to operate segregated schools. Marshall argued that these segregated schools, defended by officials as "separate but equal," were unconstitutional.

The separate-but-equal doctrine originated in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, 16 S. Ct. 1138, 41 L. Ed. 256 (1896), a case allowing segregated public accommodations for whites and blacks. In a plainspoken argument, Marshall dismissed as sheer fallacy the notion that segregated schools offered the same educational experiences to black and white students. Sociological and psychological studies demonstrated that black children were in fact harmed by the policy of school segregation. The students' self-esteem was damaged and their future diminished when they were forced to accept inadequate facilities, equipment, and educational opportunities. Marshall argued that the only purpose segregation served was to perpetuate the myth of African Americans' inferiority. A unanimous Court agreed and struck down the separate-but-equal doctrine, a momentous victory for Marshall, affecting public schools in twenty-one states.

Marshall was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 1961 and served there until 1965 when he was named solicitor general for the United States. He was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967 by President Lyndon B.Johnson and served as an associate justice for twenty-four years.

While on the Supreme Court, Marshall was known more for his impassioned dissents than for his majority opinions. In particular, as a staunch opponent of capital punishment, he regularly voiced his disagreement with the majority in death penalty cases. He was also a firm backer of affirmativeaction and contributed one of his most famous dissents in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265, 98 S. Ct. 2733, 57 L. Ed. 2d 750 (1978). In that case, Marshall criticized the High Court's ruling that a public medical school's policy of reserving sixteen of one hundred spots for minority students was unconstitutional. Marshall also dissented in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1, 93 S. Ct. 1278, 36 L. Ed. 2d 16 (1973), disagreeing with the majority view that a Texas property tax system used to fund public education was acceptable even though it allowed wealthier districts to provide a better school system for students in those districts than less wealthy districts could provide. Marshall objected strongly to the property tax arrangement, claiming that it deprived poor children of an equal education.

Marshall wrote the majority opinion in Amalgamated Food Employees Union v. Logan Valley Plaza, 391 U.S. 308, 88 S. Ct. 1601, 20 L. Ed. 2d 603 (1968), in which the Court declared that a shopping center was a public forum from which picketers could not be barred by private owners.

Marshall retired from the Court in 1991, but continued his criticism of government policies that were detrimental to African Americans or other disenfranchised groups.

Marshall died January 25, 1993, in Bethesda, Maryland. Upon Marshall's death, nearly twenty thousand mourners filed by his casket during the twelve hours it lay in state in the Great Hall of the Supreme Court.

Quotes:

"In recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings, we pay ourselves the highest tribute."

"What is the quality of your intent?"

"A child born to a Black mother in a state like Mississippi has exactly the same rights as a white baby born to the wealthiest person in the United States. It's not true, but I challenge anyone to say it is not a goal worth working for."

"I have a lifetime appointment and I intend to serve it. I expect to die at 110, shot by a jealous husband."

"Lawlessness is lawlessness. Anarchy is anarchy is anarchy. Neither race nor color nor frustration is an excuse for either lawlessness or anarchy."

For people and institutions etc. named after Thurgood Marshall, see Thurgood Marshall (disambiguation).

Thurgood Marshall
Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court
In office June 17, 1967 – June 28, 1991
Nominated by	Lyndon B. Johnson
Preceded by	Tom C. Clark
Succeeded by	Clarence Thomas
32nd United States Solicitor General
In office August 1965 – August 1967
President	Lyndon B. Johnson
Preceded by	Erwin N. Griswold
Succeeded by	Archibald Cox
Born	July 2, 1908(1908-07-02) Baltimore, Maryland, United States
Died	January 24, 1993 (aged 84) Bethesda, Maryland, United States
Spouse(s)	Vivian "Busters" Burey, Cecilia Suyat
Alma mater	Lincoln University Howard University

Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an American jurist and the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States. Before becoming a judge, he was a lawyer who was best remembered for his high success rate in arguing before the Supreme Court and for the victory in Brown v. Board of Education. He was nominated to the court by President Lyndon Johnson in 1967.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Education 3 Law career 3.1 Chief Counsel for the NAACP 3.2 U.S. Supreme Court 4 Death and legacy 5 Thurgood Marshall Award 6 Timeline 7 Books authored 8 Further reading 9 Notes 10 See also 11 External links

Early life

Marshall was born in Baltimore, Maryland on July 2, 1908, the great-grandson of a slave. His original name was Thoroughgood, but he shortened it to Thurgood in second grade because he disliked spelling it. His father, William Marshall, who was a railroad porter, instilled in him an appreciation for the Constitution of the United States and the rule of law.^[1] Additionally, as a child in Baltimore, he was punished for his school misbehavior by being forced to write copies of the Constitution, which he later said piqued his interest in the document.

Marshall was married twice; to Vivian "Buster" Burey from 1929 until her death in February 1955 and to Cecilia Suyat from December 1955 until his own death in 1993. He had two sons from his second marriage;^[2] Thurgood Marshall, Jr., who is a former top aide to President Bill Clinton, and John W. Marshall, who is a former United States Marshals Service Director and since 2002 has served as Virginia Secretary of Public Safety under Governors Mark Warner and Tim Kaine.

Education

Marshall graduated from Frederick Douglass High School in Baltimore in 1925 and from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania in 1930. Afterward, Marshall wanted to apply to his hometown law school, the University of Maryland School of Law, but the dean told him that he would not be accepted because of the school's segregation policy. Later, as a civil rights litigator, he successfully sued the school for this policy in the case of Murray v. Pearson. As he could not attend the University of Maryland, Marshall sought admission and was accepted at Howard University School of Law.

Law career

Main article: Murray v. Pearson

Thurgood Marshall in 1936 at the beginning of his career with the NAACP

Marshall received his law degree from the Howard University School of Law in 1933 where he graduated first in his class.^[3] He then set up a private practice in Baltimore. The following year, he began working with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Baltimore. He won his first major civil rights case, Murray v. Pearson, 169 Md. 478 (1936). This involved the first attempt to chip away at Plessy v. Ferguson, a plan created by his co-counsel on the case Charles Hamilton Houston. Marshall represented Donald Gaines Murray, a black Amherst College graduate with excellent credentials who had been denied admission to the University of Maryland Law School because of its separate but equal policies. This policy required black students to accept one of three options, attend: Morgan College, the Princess Anne Academy, or out-of-state black institutions. In 1935, Thurgood Marshall argued the case for Murray, showing that neither of the in-state institutions offered a law school and that such schools were entirely unequal to the University of Maryland. Marshall and Houston expected to lose and intended to appeal to the federal courts. However, the Maryland Court of Appeals ruled against the state of Maryland and its Attorney General, who represented the University of Maryland, stating "Compliance with the Constitution cannot be deferred at the will of the state. Whatever system is adopted for legal education now must furnish equality of treatment now". While it was a moral victory, the ruling had no real authority outside the state of Maryland.

Chief Counsel for the NAACP

Marshall won his very first U.S. Supreme Court case, Chambers v. Florida, 309 U.S. 227 (1940), at the age of 32. That same year, he was appointed Chief Counsel for the NAACP. He argued many other cases before the Supreme Court, most of them successfully, including Smith v. Allwright, 321 U.S. 649 (1944); Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948); Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U.S. 629 (1950); and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, 339 U.S. 637 (1950). His most famous case as a lawyer was Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), the case in which the Supreme Court ruled that "separate but equal" public education was unconstitutional because it could never be truly equal. In total, Marshall won 29 out of the 32 cases he argued before the Supreme Court.

During the 1950s, Thurgood Marshall developed a friendly relationship with J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In 1956, for example, he privately praised Hoover's campaign to discredit T.R.M. Howard, a maverick civil rights leader from Mississippi. During a national speaking tour, Howard had criticized the FBI's failure to seriously investigate cases such as the 1955 killers of George W. Lee and Emmett Till. An FBI informant reported that Marshall had “no use for Howard and nothing would please him more than to see Howard completely crushed.”^{[citation needed]} Two years earlier Howard had arranged for Marshall to deliver a well-received speech at a rally of his Regional Council of Negro Leadership in Mound Bayou, Mississippi only days before the Brown decision.^[4]

President John F. Kennedy appointed Marshall to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 1961. A group of Democratic Party Senators led by Mississippi's James Eastland held up his confirmation, so he served for the first several months under a recess appointment. Marshall remained on that court until 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him Solicitor General.

U.S. Supreme Court

Thurgood Marshall photographed in 1967 in the Oval Office

On June 13, 1967, President Johnson appointed Marshall to the Supreme Court following the retirement of Justice Tom C. Clark, saying that this was "the right thing to do, the right time to do it, the right man and the right place." Marshall was confirmed as an Associate Justice by a Senate vote of 69-11 on August 31, 1967.^[5] He was the 96th person to hold the position, and the first African-American. President Johnson confidently predicted to one biographer, Doris Kearns Goodwin, that a lot of black baby boys would be named "Thurgood" in honor of this choice (in fact, Kearns's research of birth records in New York and Boston indicates that Johnson's prophecy did not come true).^[6]

Marshall served on the Court for the next twenty-four years, compiling a liberal record that included strong support for Constitutional protection of individual rights, especially the rights of criminal suspects against the government. His most frequent ally on the Court (indeed, the pair rarely voted at odds) was Justice William Brennan, who consistently joined him in supporting abortion rights and opposing the death penalty. Brennan and Marshall concluded in Furman v. Georgia that the death penalty was, in all circumstances, unconstitutional, and never accepted the legitimacy of Gregg v. Georgia, which ruled four years later that the death penalty was constitutional in some circumstances. Thereafter, Brennan or Marshall dissented from every denial of certiorari in a capital case and from every decision upholding a sentence of death.^{[citation needed]} In 1987, Marshall gave a controversial speech on the occasion of the bicentennial celebrations of the Constitution of the United States.^[7] Marshall stated,

"the government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and major social transformations to attain the system of constitutional government and its respect for the freedoms and individual rights, we hold as fundamental today."

In conclusion Marshall stated

"Some may more quietly commemorate the suffering, struggle, and sacrifice that has triumphed over much of what was wrong with the original document, and observe the anniversary with hopes not realized and promises not fulfilled. I plan to celebrate the bicentennial of the Constitution as a living document, including the Bill of Rights and the other amendments protecting individual freedoms and human rights."^[8]

Although he is best remembered for his jurisprudence in the fields of civil rights and criminal procedure, Marshall made significant contributions to other areas of the law as well. In Teamsters v. Terry he held that the Seventh Amendment entitled the plaintiff to a jury trial in a suit against a labor union for breach of duty of fair representation. In TSC Industries, Inc. v. Northway, Inc. he articulated a formulation for the standard of materiality in United States securities law that is still applied and used today. In Cottage Savings Association v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, he weighed in on the income tax consequences of the Savings and Loan crisis, permitting a savings and loan association to deduct a loss from an exchange of mortgage participation interests. In Personnel Administrator MA v. Feeney, Marshall wrote a dissent saying that a law that gave hiring preference to veterans over non-veterans was unconstitutional because of its inequitable impact on women.

Among his many law clerks were Judge Douglas Ginsburg of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals; Judge Ralph Winter of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit; United States Solicitor General Elena Kagan; well-known law professors Dan Kahan, Cass Sunstein, Eben Moglen, Susan Low Bloch, Martha Minow, Rick Pildes, and Mark Tushnet (and editor of Thurgood Marshall: His Speeches, Writings, Arguments, Opinions and Reminiscences, cited hereafter); Law Schools Deans Paul Mahoney of University of Virginia School of Law, and Richard Revesz of New York University School of Law. See, List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States.

He retired from the Supreme Court in 1991, and was reportedly unhappy that it would fall to President George H. W. Bush to name his replacement.^[9]

Death and legacy

Marshall died of heart failure at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, at 2:58 p.m. on January 24, 1993 at the age of 84. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.^[10] His second wife and their two sons survived him.

Marshall left all of his personal papers and notes to the Library of Congress. The Librarian of Congress, James H. Billington, opened Marshall's papers for immediate use by scholars, journalists and the public, insisting that this was Marshall's intent. The Marshall family and several of his close associates disputed this claim.^[11] The decision to make the documents public was supported by the American Library Association.^[12] A list of the archived manuscripts is available.^[13]

There are numerous memorials to Justice Marshall. One is near the Maryland State House. The primary office building for the federal court system, located on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C., is named in honor of Justice Marshall and contains a statue of him in the atrium. In 2000, the historic Twelfth Street YMCA Building located in the Shaw neighborhood of Washington, D.C. was renamed the Thurgood Marshall Center. The major airport serving Baltimore and the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC, was renamed the Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport on October 1, 2005. In 2009 the General Convention of the Episcopal Church USA voted to begin work to establish a liturgical feast day.^[14]

Thurgood Marshall Award

The Legislative Assembly of Puerto Rico instituted^[15] in 1993 the annual Thurgood Marshall Award, given to the top student in civil rights at each of Puerto Rico's four law schools. The awardees are selected by the United States territory's Attorney General and includes a $500 monetary award.

Timeline

Marshall in 1957

• 1908 - Born July 2 at Baltimore, Maryland, United States.
• 1930 - Thurgood graduates with honors from Lincoln University, PA (cum laude).
• 1934 - Thurgood receives law degree from Howard University (magna cum laude); begins private practice in Baltimore, Maryland.
• 1934 - Begins to work for Baltimore branch of NAACP.
• 1935 - Worked with Charles Houston, wins first major civil rights case, Murray v. Pearson.
• 1936 - Becomes assistant special council for NAACP in New York.
• 1940 - Wins Chambers v. Florida, the first of twenty-nine Supreme Court victories.
• 1943 - Won case for integration of schools in Hillburn, New York.
• 1944 - Successfully argues Smith v. Allwright, overthrowing the South's "white primary".
• 1946 - Thurgood Marshall received a medal from the NAACP.
• 1948 - Wins Shelley v. Kraemer, in which Supreme Court strikes down legality of racially restrictive covenants.
• 1950 - Wins Supreme Court victories in two graduate-school integration cases, Sweatt v. Painter and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents.
• 1951 - Visits South Korea and Japan to investigate charges of racism in U.S. armed forces. He reported that the general practice was one of "rigid segregation."
• 1954 - Wins Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, landmark case that demolishes legal basis for segregation in America.
• 1956 - Wins Browder v. Gayle, ending the practice of segregation on buses and ending the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
• 1957 - Founds and becomes the first president-director counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., a nonprofit law firm separate and independent of the NAACP
• 1961 - Defends civil rights demonstrators, winning Supreme Court victory in Garner v. Louisiana; nominated to Second Circuit Court of Appeals by President J.F. Kennedy.
• 1961 - Appointed circuit judge, makes 112 rulings, none of them reversed on certiorari by Supreme Court (1961-1965).
• 1965 - Appointed United States Solicitor General by President Lyndon B. Johnson; wins 14 of the 19 cases he argues for the government (1965-1967).
• 1967 - Becomes first African American elevated to U.S. Supreme Court (1967-1991).
• 1991 - Retires from the Supreme Court.
• 1992 - Receives the Liberty Medal recognizing Marshall's long history of protecting individual rights under the Constitution.
• 1993 - Dies at age 84 in Bethesda, Maryland, near Washington, D.C.
• 1993 - Receives Presidential Medal of Freedom, posthumously, from President William Clinton.

For more, see Bradley C. S. Watson, "The Jurisprudence of William Joseph Brennan, Jr., and Thurgood Marshall" in Frost, Bryan-Paul and Jeffrey Sikkenga. eds. History of American Political Thought (Lexington: Lexington Books, 2003). ISBN 0739106236; ISBN 978-0739106235; ISBN 9780393928860.

Books authored

Wikisource has original text related to this article: author: Thurgood Marshall

• Marshall, Thurgood; Tushnet, Mark V. (Editor); and Kennedy, Randall (Forward by). (2001). Thurgood Marshall: His Speeches, Writings, Arguments, Opinions and Reminiscences. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, Incorporated -- Lawrence Hill Books. ISBN 9781556523861.. 

Further reading

• Abraham, Henry J. (1992). Justices and Presidents: A Political History of Appointments to the Supreme Court (3rd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-506557-3. 
• Bland, Randall W. "Private Pressure on Public Law: The Legal Career of Justice Thurgood Marshall 1934-1991". New York: University Press of America, 1993.
• Cushman, Clare (2001). The Supreme Court Justices: Illustrated Biographies, 1789–1995 (2nd ed.). (Supreme Court Historical Society, Congressional Quarterly Books). ISBN 1568021267. 
• Frank, John P. (1995). Friedman, Leon; Israel, Fred L.. eds. The Justices of the United States Supreme Court: Their Lives and Major Opinions. Chelsea House Publishers. ISBN 0791013774; ISBN 978-0791013779. 
• Hall, Kermit L., ed (1992). The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195058356; ISBN 9780195058352. 
• Hodges, Ruth A., Reference Librarian. Justice Thurgood Marshall: A Selected Bibliography, (Moorland-Spingarn Research Center Washington, DC, February, 1993).
• Marshall, Thurgood. "Mr. Justice Murphy and Civil Rights." 48 Michigan Law Review 745 (1950).
• Martin, Fenton S.; Goehlert, Robert U. (1990). The U.S. Supreme Court: A Bibliography. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Books. ISBN 0871875543. 
• Tushnet, Mark V. Making Civil Rights Law: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court, 1936-1961. London: Oxford University Press, 1994. 399pp. ISBN 9780195104684;
• Tushnet, Mark V. Making Constitutional Law: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court, 1961-1991. New York: Oxford University Press. 1997. ISBN 0195093143 pp., 256.
• Urofsky, Melvin I. (1994). The Supreme Court Justices: A Biographical Dictionary. New York: Garland Publishing. pp. 590. ISBN 0815311761; ISBN 978-0815311768. 
• Vile, John R., ed. (2003), Great American Judges: An Encyclopedia, 1, Santa Barbara: ABC–CLIO, ISBN 978-1576079898 .
• White, G. Edward (2007), The American Judicial Tradition: Profiles of Leading American Judges (3rd ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0195139624.
• Williams, Juan, Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary (New York: New York Times, 1998). Promotional site for book ISBN 0812932994; ISBN 978-0812932997.
• Woodward, Robert; Armstrong, Scott (1979). The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court. New York. ISBN 9780380521838; ISBN 0380521830. ISBN 9780671241100; ISBN 0671241109; ISBN 0743274024; ISBN 9780743274029.. 

Notes

1. ^ A Thurgood Marshall time line: provided by A Deeper Shade of Black
2. ^ American Public Radio: Cissy Marshall
3. ^ Bland;6, 1933
4. ^ David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, Black Maverick: T.R.M. Howard's Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 132-35, 157-58.
5. ^ Graham, Fred P. (August 31, 1967) Senate Confirms Marshall As the First Negro Justice; 10 Southerners Oppose High Court Nominee in 69-to-11 Vote. New York Times.
6. ^ According to the Social Security Administration Popular baby name database, Thurgood has never been in the top 1000 of male baby names.
7. ^ Tinsley E. Yarbrough (2000). "The Rehnquist Court and the Constitution". Oxford University Press US. http://books.google.com/books?id=Z8DX12_NJ2AC&printsec=frontcover#PPA64,M1. Retrieved 2009-05-01. 
8. ^ ThurgoodMarshall.com, Speeches. Constitutional Speech, May 6, 1987. Retrieved on April 7, 2009.
9. ^ Lee Epstein, Jeffrey Allan Segal (2005). "Advice and consent: the politics of judicial appointments". Oxford University Press US. http://books.google.com/books?id=v-0tK76f1t8C&pg=PA39&lpg=PA39#v=onepage&q=&f=false. Retrieved 2009-08-13. 
10. ^ Thurgood Marshall Memorial at Find a Grave. See also, Christensen, George A. (1983) Here Lies the Supreme Court: Gravesites of the Justices, Yearbook. Supreme Court Historical Society. Christensen, George A., Here Lies the Supreme Court: Revisited, Journal of Supreme Court History, Volume 33 Issue 1, Pages 17 - 41 (19 Feb 2008), University of Alabama.
11. ^ Lewis, Neil A. (May 26, 1993). "Chief Justice Assails Library On Release of Marshall Papers". New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE7D8163BF935A15756C0A965958260. Retrieved 2007-12-17. 
12. ^ American Library Association statement of support.
13. ^ Cartledge, Connie L., assisted by Allyson H. Jackson, Susie H. Moody, Andrew M. Passett, and Robert A. Vietrogoski, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Thurgood Marshall: A Register of His Papers in the Library of Congress (2001)
14. ^ [1]
15. ^ Legislative Service Bureau, Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

See also

List of Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States List of U.S. Supreme Court Justices by time in office List of United States Chief Justices by time in office

• United States Supreme Court cases during the Warren Court
• United States Supreme Court cases during the Burger Court
• United States Supreme Court cases during the Rehnquist Court

External links

• Ariens, Michael, Thurgood Marshall.
• Fox, John, Expanding Civil Rights, Biographies of the Robes, Thurgood Marshall. Public Broadcasting Service.
• Miscellaneous biographies at Answers.com.
• Oyez, official Supreme Court media, Thurgood Marshall.
• Supreme Court Historical Society Thurgood Marshall.
• Thurgood Marshall at Find a Grave
• REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT IN CEREMONY HONORING MEDAL OF FREEDOM RECIPIENTS - November 30, 1993

Legal offices
Preceded by New seat	Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit 1962-1965	Succeeded by Wilfred Feinberg
Preceded by Archibald Cox	Solicitor General 1965–1967	Succeeded by Erwin N. Griswold
Preceded by Tom C. Clark	Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States October 2, 1967 – October 1, 1991	Succeeded by Clarence Thomas

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Supreme Court of the United States

The Warren Court Chief Justice: Earl Warren (1953–1969) 1967–1969: H. Black | Wm. O. Douglas | J.M. Harlan II | Wm. J. Brennan | P. Stewart | B. White | A. Fortas | T. Marshall The Burger Court Chief Justice: Warren Earl Burger (1969–1986) 1969–1970: H. Black | Wm. O. Douglas | J.M. Harlan II | Wm. J. Brennan | P. Stewart | B. White | T. Marshall 1970–1971: H. Black | Wm. O. Douglas | J.M. Harlan II | Wm. J. Brennan | P. Stewart | B. White | T. Marshall | H. Blackmun 1972–1975: Wm. O. Douglas | Wm. J. Brennan | P. Stewart | B. White | T. Marshall | H. Blackmun | L.F. Powell, Jr. | Wm. Rehnquist 1975–1981: Wm. J. Brennan | P. Stewart | B. White | T. Marshall | H. Blackmun | L.F. Powell, Jr. | Wm. Rehnquist | J.P. Stevens 1981–1986: Wm. J. Brennan | B. White | T. Marshall | H. Blackmun | L.F. Powell, Jr. | Wm. Rehnquist | J.P. Stevens | S.D. O'Connor The Rehnquist Court Chief Justice: William Hubbs Rehnquist (1986–2005) 1986–1987: Wm. J. Brennan | B. White | T. Marshall | H. Blackmun | L.F. Powell, Jr. | J.P. Stevens | S.D. O'Connor | A. Scalia 1988–1990: Wm. J. Brennan | B. White | T. Marshall | H. Blackmun | J.P. Stevens | S.D. O'Connor | A. Scalia | A. Kennedy 1990–1991: B. White | T. Marshall | H. Blackmun | J.P. Stevens | S.D. O'Connor | A. Scalia | A. Kennedy | D. Souter

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