Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993)
Thurgood Marshall earned his law degree from Howard Law School in Washington, D.C. and made significant contributions in the quest for legal justice and civil rights in the United States. He argued cases which furthered the rights of African-Americans and then became the first African-American appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. His early career involved assisting his mentor Charles Hamilton Houston, who served as special counsel to the Legal Defense Fund of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The group challenged the validity of segregation and the concept of separate but equal as established by the 1896 Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Ferguson. They argued that the decision violated the 14th Amendment. In 1954 Marshall won his most famous case, Brown v. Board of Education. Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Earl Warren announced the unanimous decision that segregation of public schools was inherently unequal and unconstitutional, and he ordered desegregation. The decision motivated school districts to address the inadequate educational systems for blacks which had resulted from the "separate-but-equal" approach to segregation. President Lyndon Johnson nominated Marshall to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967 and he served until retirement in 1991.
Additional Information Can Be Found At...
Thurgood Marshall (1908 - 1993)
Marshall, Thurgood - Encarta Online Deluxe
Military District of Washington - Fact Sheet: Biography of Thurgood Marshall