USA Law

Thurgood Marshall

Thurgood Marshall in the United States

Thurgood Marshall was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on July 2, 1908. He graduated in 1930 from Lincoln University and in 1933 from Howard University Law School in Washington, D.C., ranking first in his class.

Marshall began his legal career as counsel to the Baltimore branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He joined the Association’s national legal staff in 1936 and in 1938 became its Chief Legal Officer.

In 1940, the NAACP created the Legal Defense and Education Fund, with Marshall as its director and Counsel. Marshall coordinated the NAACP effort to end racial segregation for the next twenty years.

In 1954, he argued the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka before the Supreme Court of the United States, a case in which racial segregation in United States public schools was declared unconstitutional. Other cases argued by Thurgood Marshall include:
• Smith v. Allwright, 1944 – Which ruled that a Southern state’s exclusion of African-American voters from primary elections was unconstitutional.
• Shelley v. Kraemer, 1948 – Which ruled that state judicial enforcement of racial “restrictive covenants” in housing was unconstitutional.
• Sweatt v. Painter and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, 1950 – both of these cases ruled against the concept of “separate but equal” facilities for African-American professionals and graduate students in state universities.

In 1961 President John F. Kennedy appointed Marshall to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. This was followed four years later by his appointment to Solicitor General of the United States by President Lyndon B. Johnson.

President Johnson then nominated Marshall to the Supreme Court of the United States on June 13, 1967. After lengthy and often very heated debate the Senate confirmed the appointment on August 30, 1967, making Justice Marshall the first African-American Justice to sit on the Supreme Court. Marshall served 23 years on the Supreme Court, retiring on June 27, 1991, at the age of 82. Justice Marshall died on January 24, 1993.

Main source: The Supreme Court of the United States: Its Beginnings and its Justices, 1790-1991. Washington, DC: The Commission on the Bicentennial of the United States Constitution, 1992.

Citations from the Congressional Record regarding Marshall’s appointment to the Supreme Court:

Congressional Record, June 15, 1967, pp. 15692-15693. Comments of Congressman Ottinger (D – NY).

Congressional Record, June 15, 1967, pp. 15967- 15970. Comments of Congressman Rarick (D – LA.).

Congressional Record, June 27, 1967, pp. 17506-17507. Comments of Senator Morse (D – OR).

Congressional Record, August 21, 1967, p.23376. Report of The Committee on the Judiciary.

Congressional Record, August 30, 1967, pp. 24583- 24657. Executive Session: Nomination of Thurgood Marshall to be Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court.

Congressional Record, August 30, 1967, p. 24657. Comments of Senator Mansfield (D – MT).

Felix Frankfurter’s draft decree to enforce the Brown v. Board of Education decision, [8 April 1955].
(Felix Frankfurter Papers)

Justice Frankfurter’s draft decree in the Brown case (Library of Congress)

On 17 May 1954 Chief Justice Earl Warren (1891-1974) delivered the Supreme Court’s unanimous opinion in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, which declared school segregation in the United States unconstitutional. After the Brown opinion was announced, the Court heard additional arguments during the following term on the decree for implementing the ruling. When Warren announced the remedy in Brown II in 1955, he utilized an equitable conception that originated years earlier with Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841-1935)–“with all deliberate speed.” In this draft of the decree prepared by Justice Felix Frankfurter (1882-1965) on 8 April 1955, which Warren subsequently adopted, Frankfurter used the phrase “with all deliberate speed” to replace “forthwith,” the word proposed by National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) lawyers to achieve an accelerated desegregation timetable. This draft decree, along with related unique documents in the Frankfurter Papers, has helped scholars analyze the evolution of Brown.

Frankfurter wanted to anchor the decree in an established doctrine associated with the revered Holmes, but his endorsement of “all deliberate speed” sought to advance a consensus held by the entire Court. Each justice thought that the decree should provide for flexible enforcement, should appeal to established principles, and should suggest some basic ground rules for judges of the lower courts, who would implement the Brown decision. Shortly after he retired from the Court, Warren acknowledged that “all deliberate speed” was chosen as a benchmark because “there were so many blocks preventing an immediate solution of the thing in reality that the best we could look for would be a progression of action.” When it became clear, however, that critics of desegregation were using the doctrine to delay and avoid compliance with Brown, the Court began to express reservations about the phrase. In 1964, less than a decade after “all deliberate speed” was prescribed, Justice Hugo LaFayette Black (1886-1971) declared in a desegregation opinion that “[t]he time for mere ‘deliberate speed’ has run out.”

Marshall, Thurgood (1908_)

United States Constitution

According to the Encyclopedia of the American Constitution, about its article titled MARSHALL, THURGOOD (1908_) Thurgood Marshall, the first black Justice of the Supreme Court, was born in Baltimore in 1908. After graduation from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, Marshall attended Howard University Law School. Graduating first in his class in 1933, Marshall became one of charles
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Thurgood Marshall

Introduction to Thurgood Marshall

Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993), American jurist, the first black justice on the Supreme Court of the United States. Marshall came to prominence as the civil rights lawyer who won the legal case making segregation in public schools unconstitutional. Throughout his long and varied career, he was a tireless advocate for the rights of minorities and the poor.” (1)

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Thurgood Marshall Early Life

Introduction to Thurgood Marshall

Thurgood Marshall was born on July 2, 1908, in Baltimore, Maryland. He was named for his paternal grandfather, a former slave who changed his name to Thoroughgood when he joined the United States Army during the Civil War (1861-1865). Marshall’s mother, Norma Arica Marshall, was one of the first blacks to graduate from Columbia Teacher’s College in New York City. His father, William Canfield Marshall, worked as a railroad porter and as head steward at an exclusive white club. William Marshall was the first black person to serve on a grand jury in Baltimore in the 20th century.

Thurgood Marshall grew up in Baltimore and graduated from an all-black high school at age 16. He attended Lincoln University in Chester County, Pennsylvania, the nation’s oldest historically black college. While in college Marshall participated in a successful sit-in at a local movie theater. Protesters occupied “whites-only” seats to force the theater to cease making black patrons sit in a segregated balcony section. Marshall married Vivien “Buster” Burey in 1930. They remained married until her death in 1955.

After graduating with high honors from Lincoln in 1930, Marshall applied to the University of Maryland School of Law, which rejected him because of his race. Instead, he studied at Howard University Law School in Washington, D.C., and graduated first in his class in 1933.” (1)

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Thurgood Marshall Death

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Poor health forced Marshall to retire from the Supreme Court in 1991. Marshall died of heart failure in Washington, D.C., on January 24, 1993. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. He was survived by his second wife, Cecilia Marshall, and their two sons. Like many Supreme Court justices, he left all of his personal papers, including his notes from meetings with other justices, to the Library of Congress. Contrary to usual practice, Marshall declared that his papers should be open for immediate use by scholars, journalists, and others.” (1)

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