“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.”

Thurgood Marshall

(1908-1993) — First African-American Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

By Bob Hilson

When President Lyndon B. Johnson nominated Thurgood Marshall for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967 – thus to become the first African American to sit on the nation’s highest court – the president’s words were few but powerful when he said it was “the right thing to do, the right time to do it, the right man and the right place.”

Marshall would go on to serve the next 24 years on the Supreme Court, becoming one of the court’s most liberal justices as he staunchly supported the constitutional rights of all U.S. citizens.

Mr. Civil Rights

Although he attained the nation’s highest judicial position, Marshall was equally known as a successful civil rights attorney before serving on the high court. His work with the NAACP earned Marshall the moniker “Mr. Civil Rights” as he traveled the country representing clients in disputes of racial injustice.

As executive director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, Marshall argued 32 cases before the Supreme Court and won 29. One of Marshall’s more noted victories was the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling, which invalidated state-enforced racial segregation in public schools.

Marshall was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy. In 1965, Johnson named Marshall as U.S. solicitor general, the first African American to hold the office.

The grandson of a slave, Marshall was born in Baltimore and graduated from the city’s Colored High and Training School, later renamed Frederick Douglass High School. He later graduated from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and applied to the University of Maryland Law School.

Marshall was denied admission to the Maryland Law School because of his race. He instead went to law school at historically black Howard University, where he graduated first in his class. Three years later, he successfully sued the University of Maryland to admit black students.

Marshall died in 1993. To many, he stands alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X as one of three leading civil rights figures of the 1900s. Upon his death, one obituary read:

“We make movies about Malcolm X, we get a holiday to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, but every day we live the legacy of Justice Thurgood Marshall.”

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