Tags
American, Arlington National Cemetery, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, Celebrity, civil rights activist, Court of Appeals, founded NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, heart failure, Howard University, lawyer, Solicitor General, Thoroughgood Marshall, Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993)
Born Thoroughgood Marshall in Baltimore, Maryland, he was an American lawyer and civil rights activist who served as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from October 1967 until October 1991. Marshall was the Court’s first African-American justice. Prior to his judicial service, he successfully argued several cases before the Supreme Court, including Brown v. Board of Education.
Marshall graduated from the Howard University School of Law in 1933. He established a private legal practice in Baltimore before founding the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, where he served as executive director. In that position, he argued several cases before the Supreme Court, including Smith v. Allwright, Shelley v. Kraemer, and Brown v. Board of Education, the latter of which held that racial segregation in public education is a violation of the Equal Protection Clause. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed Marshall to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Four years later, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Marshall as the United States Solicitor General. In 1967, Johnson successfully nominated Marshall to succeed retiring Associate Justice Tom C. Clark as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Marshall retired during the administration of President George H. W. Bush, and was succeeded by Clarence Thomas.
Marshall was instilled very early on an appreciation for the Constitution and the rule of law by his parents. His father would take him and his brother to watch local court cases and they would debate what they had seen as well as other current events. Though his father didn’t specifically encourage him to become a lawyer, that is certainly what he ended up turning him into. It’s also no wonder that he opposed segregation from an early age as well. From his first foray into university (Lincoln University) from he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in American literature and philosophy, he opposed the integration of African-American professors. He would have gone on to study at his hometown law school of the University of Maryland School of Law, but declined to apply due to the school’s policy of segregation, which was how he ended up at Howard University. His mother had to pawn her wedding and engagements rings to pay his tuition. He graduated from Howard’s School of Law at the top of his class and with an LL.B. magna cum laude.
Marshall died of heart failure at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, on January 24, 1993, at the age of 84. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. He was survived by his second wife (Cecilia Suyat) and their two sons (Thurgood Marshall Jr. and John W. Marshall). Numerous memorials have been dedicated to Marshall. An 8-foot (2.4 m) statue stands in Lawyers Mall adjacent to the Maryland State House. The statue, dedicated on October 22, 1996, depicts Marshall as a young lawyer and is placed just a few feet (a meter or two) away from where stood the Old Maryland Supreme Court Building, the court where Marshall argued discrimination cases leading up to the Brown decision. The primary office building for the federal court system, located on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., is named in honor of Marshall and contains a statue of him in the atrium. In 1976, Texas Southern University renamed its law school after the sitting justice. In 1980, the University of Maryland School of Law opened a new library, which it named the Thurgood Marshall Law Library. 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, D.C., was renamed the Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport on October 1, 2005. The 2009 General Convention of the Episcopal Church added Marshall to the church’s liturgical calendar of “Holy Women, Holy Men: Celebrating the Saints,” designating May 17 as his feast day. His membership of the Lincoln University fraternity Alpha Phi Alpha was to have been memorialized by a sculpture by Alvin Pettit in 2013. The University of California, San Diego renamed its Third College after Marshall in 1993. Marshall Middle School, in Olympia, Washington, is also named after Marshall, as is Thurgood Marshall Academy in Washington, D.C.