Thurgood Marshall

Thurgood Marshall was born on July 2, 1908, in Baltimore, MarylandMarylandMaryland is a Middle Atlantic state of the United States, deeply indented by Chesapeake Bay and bordered by Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, the District of Columbia and West Virginia; its capital is Annapolis and its largest city is Baltimore. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on April 28, 1788, as the seventh state to do so, and had a population of 6,177,224 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry. His father, William Canfield Marshall, was a railroad porter and a steward at an all-white country club; his mother, Norma Williams Marshall, was an elementary school teacher. The National Park Service notes that his father inspired him to pursue the law.⁠[1][2][3][4]

He attended Frederick DouglassFrederick DouglassFrederick Douglass (1818–1895) was an American abolitionist, orator, newspaper publisher and author. Born into slavery, he escaped in 1838 and became a leading figure of the abolition movement, best known for his autobiography Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself; in later life he served as U.S. marshal for the District of Columbia and as U.S. minister to Haiti, among other posts.Open the full entry High School in Baltimore and then Lincoln University in PennsylvaniaPennsylvaniaPennsylvania (officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania) is a Middle Atlantic state of the United States; its capital is Harrisburg, and Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are its two great metropolitan areas. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on December 12, 1787, the second state to do so. Its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 13,002,700.Open the full entry, where his schoolmates included Langston Hughes and Kwame Nkrumah, graduating with honors with an A.B. in 1930. Rejected by the University of Maryland Law School because he was Black, he attended Howard University School of Law, graduating first in his class with an LL.B. in 1933, and was admitted to the bar that year.⁠[4][1][2][3]

At Howard he was mentored by Dean Charles Hamilton Houston; Marshall later recalled that Houston insisted they be “social engineers rather than lawyers.”⁠[4][5]

From 1933 to 1937 he practiced law privately in Baltimore, and from 1934 he served as counsel to the NAACP’s Baltimore Regional Office. In 1935, with Charles Hamilton Houston, he won Murray v. Pearson, challenging the University of Maryland Law School’s refusal to admit a Black applicant solely because of race as a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection guarantee; it was his first major civil rights victory.⁠[1][2][3]

In 1936 he joined the NAACP’s legal staff under Houston, serving as special assistant counsel from 1936 to 1938 and as special counsel from 1938 to 1940. In 1940 he founded the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and became its first director-counsel, serving until 1961. That year he won Chambers v. FloridaFloridaFlorida is a U.S. state occupying mainly the Florida peninsula, with its capital at Tallahassee; its most populous city is Jacksonville. It entered the Union on March 3, 1845, as the 27th state, and had a population of 21,538,187 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry, his first victory before the Supreme Court.⁠[2][1][5][3]

In the 1940s and 1950s he won 29 of the 32 cases he argued before the Supreme Court. Among them, Smith v. Allwright (1944) struck down TexasTexasTexas is a U.S. state in the south-central United States, with its capital at Austin and its largest city Houston. It was admitted to the Union on December 29, 1845, as the 28th state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 29,145,505 residents.Open the full entry’s whites-only primary elections, Shelley v. Kraemer (1948) held that restrictive covenants barring Black homeownership could not be enforced in state courts, and Sweatt v. Painter and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents (both 1950) addressed segregation in state universities. He led the litigation strategy that gradually weakened the “separate but equal” doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), at one point overseeing as many as 450 cases at once.⁠[2][5]

He argued Brown v. Board of Education before the Supreme Court in 1952 and 1953, contending that segregation in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and drawing on psychological, sociological and historical evidence. In 1954 the Court unanimously overturned the “separate but equal” doctrine, declaring that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”⁠[5][4][2]

Between 1956 and 1958 the boards of the Legal Defense Fund and the NAACP separated and Marshall resigned as NAACP special counsel; the Legal Defense Fund became an organization independent of the NAACP, with its own leadership and board, in 1957.⁠[6][5]

On September 23, 1961, President John F. KennedyJohn F. KennedyJohn F. Kennedy (1917–1963) was an American politician who represented Massachusetts in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate and served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 to 1963. The youngest person elected president and the first Roman Catholic to hold the office, he was assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963.Open the full entry nominated him to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit; the Senate took no vote, and on October 5 Kennedy gave him a recess appointment to a new seat created by 75 Stat. 80. Renominated on January 15, 1962, he was confirmed on September 11, 1962, after Southern senators delayed the confirmation for months, and received his commission on September 14. None of the 112 opinions he wrote on that court was overturned on appeal. He resigned on August 23, 1965.⁠[1][2][5]

In July 1965 President Lyndon B. JohnsonLyndon B. JohnsonLyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) was an American politician who served Texas as a U.S. representative and senator and led the Senate Democrats, became vice president in 1961 and succeeded to the presidency on the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, serving as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. His administration enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and other “Great Society” legislation while expanding the U.S. military commitment in the Vietnam War.Open the full entry appointed him Solicitor General of the United States, then the highest-ranking Black official in the history of the U.S. government. In that post he won 14 of the 19 cases he argued before the Supreme Court.⁠[2][7][4]

On June 13, 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson nominated him to succeed Tom C. Clark as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. The Senate confirmed him 69–11 on August 30, he was commissioned the same day, and he took the judicial oath on October 2, becoming the first African American justice; the Court lists him as appointed from New York.⁠[1][2][8]

During his 24-year tenure Marshall was the Court’s only Black justice. His majority opinions included Amalgamated Food Employees Union v. Logan Valley Plaza (1968), Stanley v. Georgia (1969) and Bounds v. Smith; he dissented in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke and wrote more than 150 dissents from denials of death penalty appeals. His law clerks included Elena Kagan, Cass Sunstein and Randall L. KennedyRandall KennedyRandall Kennedy (Randall L. Kennedy, born 1954) is an American legal scholar and the Michael R. Klein Professor at Harvard Law School, whose work examines the intersection of racial conflict and legal institutions. A former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, he has written books on race and criminal law, a racial slur, interracial intimacy and affirmative action, and his views have drawn criticism from both left and right.Open the full entry.⁠[7][5]

BritannicaEncyclopædia BritannicaEncyclopædia Britannica is a general English-language encyclopedia first published in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1768; the name also refers to its publisher, Chicago-based Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. (which presents itself as The Britannica Group). The print edition ended in 2012, and the company’s main businesses since then have been the online encyclopedia Britannica.com, digital education products for schools and libraries, and Merriam-Webster dictionaries.Open the full entry judges that he was a steadfast liberal and a pragmatic judicial activist who sought to make the Constitution work for all; his proposed “sliding scale” approach to equal protection was never adopted by the Court, though it echoed his views in several civil rights cases of the 1970s. He opposed capital punishment and generally favored federal over state power; by the end of his tenure he was one of the few remaining liberal justices, earning the nickname “the Great Dissenter.”⁠[2]

Marshall retired in 1991; his service as Associate Justice ended on October 1, 1991, when he assumed senior status.⁠[8][1]

Thurgood Marshall died of heart failure in Bethesda, Maryland, on January 24, 1993, at the age of 84, and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery in VirginiaVirginiaVirginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state whose capital is Richmond. It entered the Union on June 25, 1788, as the 10th state, and had a population of 8,631,393 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry, Section 5, Grave 40-3.⁠[3][2][7]

Marshall married Vivian Burey on September 4, 1929; she died in February 1955, and on December 12 of that year he married Cecilia Suyat. He had two sons: Thurgood Jr., who served on the staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee and as an aide to Vice President Al Gore, and John William, who became a Virginia state police officer.⁠[3]

A Maryland State Archives biography notes that he has been called the greatest civil rights and constitutional lawyer of the twentieth century. Arlington National Cemetery quotes his summary of his legal philosophy: “You do what you think is right, and the law will catch up.” The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund maintains the Thurgood Marshall Institute, a multidisciplinary center that carries on his legacy.⁠[3][7][5]

NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund: Official website: https://www.naacpldf.org/about-us/history/ (opens in a new window).⁠[9]

Supreme Court of the United States (list of justices): Web page: https://supremecourt.gov/about/members_text.aspx (opens in a new window).⁠[8]

Federal Judicial Center (Thurgood Marshall judicial biography): Web page: https://www.fjc.gov/history/judges/marshall-thurgood (opens in a new window).⁠[1]

Arlington National Cemetery (Thurgood Marshall’s grave): Web page: https://www.arlingtoncemetery.mil/Explore/Notable-Graves/Supreme-Court/Thurgood-Marshall (opens in a new window).⁠[7]