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1967- First African-American Sworn In as Supreme Court Justice

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1967- First African-American Sworn In as Supreme Court Justice

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Thurgood Marshall was the first African-American to be sworn in as a Supreme Court Justice. This ended legal segregation in the United States. He was also the leading council for the NAACP for the Brown vs. Board of Education case.

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Who Was Thurgood Marshall?

Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 to January 24, 1993) was an American lawyer who was appointed as an associate justice of the Supreme Court in 1967. He was the first African-American to hold the position and served for 24 years, until 1991. Marshall studied law at Howard University. As counsel to the NAACP, he utilized the judiciary to champion equality for African Americans. In 1954, he won the Brown v. Board of Education case, in which the Supreme Court ended racial segregation in public schools.

(Photo: Stock Montage/Getty Images)

Movie on Thurgood Marshall

In 2017, the biopic film Marshall was released. Starring Chadwick Boseman, Josh Gad and Kate Hudson, the movie focuses on an obscure 1941 rape case brought by Eleanor Strubing, a 32-year-old white woman, against her 32-year-old black chauffeur, Joseph Spell. While Spell initially confessed to the crime after 16 hours of interrogation, he later said the encounter was consensual. During the trial, the judge allowed Thurgood Marshall to assist his white co-attorney but banned him from speaking a single word. Following 12 hours of deliberation, the jury of six men and six women came back with a not guilty verdict.

Thurgood Marshall's Wife and Kids

Marshall married Vivian "Buster" Burey in 1929, and the couple remained married until her death in 1955. Shortly thereafter, Marshall married Cecilia Suyat, his secretary at the NAACP. The couple had two sons together, Thurgood Jr. and John Marshall.

When and Where Was Thurgood Marshall Born?

Thurgood Marshall was born on July 2, 1908, in Baltimore, Maryland.

Family and Early Life

Thurgood Marshall's father was William Marshall, the grandson of a slave who worked as a steward at an exclusive club. His mother, Norma, was a kindergarten teacher.

One of William Marshall's favorite pastimes was to listen to cases at the local courthouse before returning home to rehash the lawyers' arguments with his sons. Thurgood Marshall later recalled, "Now you want to know how I got involved in law? I don't know. The nearest I can get is that my dad, my brother and I had the most violent arguments you ever heard about anything. I guess we argued five out of seven nights at the dinner table."

Education

Thurgood Marshall attended Baltimore's Colored High and Training School (later renamed Frederick Douglass High School), where he was an above-average student and put his finely honed skills of argument to use as a star member of the debate team. The teenage Marshall was also something of a mischievous troublemaker. His greatest high school accomplishment, memorizing the entire United States Constitution, was actually a teacher's punishment for misbehaving in class.

After graduating from high school in 1926, Marshall attended Lincoln University, a historically black college in Pennsylvania. There, he joined a remarkably distinguished student body that included Kwame Nkrumah, the future president of Ghana; Langston Hughes, the great poet; and Cab Calloway, the famous jazz singer.

After graduating from Lincoln with honors in 1930, Marshall applied to the University of Maryland Law School. Despite being overqualified academically, Marshall was rejected because of his race. This firsthand experience with discrimination in education made a lasting impression on Marshall and helped determine the future course of his career.

Instead of Maryland, Marshall attended law school in Washington, D.C. at Howard University, another historically black school. The dean of Howard Law School at the time was the pioneering civil rights lawyer Charles Houston. Marshall quickly fell under the tutelage of Houston, a notorious disciplinarian and extraordinarily demanding professor. Marshall recalled of Houston, "He would not be satisfied until he went to a dance on the campus and found all of his students sitting around the wall reading law books instead of partying."

Marshall graduated magna cum laude from Howard in 1933. He briefly attempted to establish his own practice in Baltimore, but without experience he failed to land any significant cases.

Thurgood Marshall's Court Cases

In 1934, Thurgood Marshall began working for the Baltimore branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1936, Marshall moved to New York City to work full time as legal counsel for the NAACP. Over several decades, Marshall argued and won a variety of cases to strike down many forms of legalized racism, helping to inspire the American civil rights movement.

Murray v. Pearson

In one of Marshall's first cases - which he argued alongside his mentor, Charles Houston - he defended another well-qualified undergraduate, Donald Murray, who like himself had been denied entrance to the University of Maryland Law School. Marshall and Houston won Murray v. Pearson in January 1936, the first in a long string of cases designed to undermine the legal basis for de jure racial segregation in the United States.

Chambers v. Florida

Marshall's first victory before the Supreme Court came in Chambers v. Florida (1940), in which he successfully defended four black men who had been convicted of murder on the basis of confessions coerced from them by police.

Smith v. Allwright

Another crucial Supreme Court victory for Marshall came in the 1944 case of Smith v. Allwright, in which the Court struck down the Democratic Party's use of whites-only primary elections in various Southern states.

Brown v. Board of Education

The great achievement of Marshall's career as a civil-rights lawyer was his victory in the landmark 1954 Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. The class-action lawsuit was filed on behalf of a group of black parents in Topeka, Kansas, whose children were forced to attend all-black segregated schools. Through Brown v. Board, one of the most important cases of the 20th century, Marshall challenged head-on the legal underpinning of racial segregation, the doctrine of "separate but equal" established by the 1896 Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson.

On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal," and therefore racial segregation of public schools violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

While enforcement of the Court's ruling proved to be uneven and painfully slow, Brown v. Board provided the legal foundation, and much of the inspiration, for the American civil rights movement that unfolded over the next decade. At the same time, the case established Marshall as one of the most successful and prominent lawyers in America.

Circuit Court Judge & Solicitor General

In 1961, newly-elected President John F. Kennedy appointed Thurgood Marshall as a judge for the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Serving as a circuit court judge over the next four years, Marshall issued more than 100 decisions, none of which was overturned by the Supreme Court.

In 1965, Kennedy's successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, appointed Marshall to serve as the first black U.S. solicitor general, the attorney designated to argue on behalf of the federal government before the Supreme Court. During his two years as solicitor general, Marshall won 14 of the 19 cases that he argued before the Supreme Court.

Supreme Court Justice

In 1967, President Johnson nominated Marshall to serve on the bench before which he had successfully argued so many times before: the United States Supreme Court. On October 2, 1967, Marshall was sworn in as a Supreme Court justice, becoming the first African American to serve on the nation's highest court. Marshall joined a liberal Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren, which aligned with Marshall's views on politics and the Constitution.

As a Supreme Court justice, Marshall consistently supported rulings upholding a strong protection of individual rights and liberal interpretations of controversial social issues. He was part of the majority that ruled in favor of the right to abortion in the landmark 1973 case Roe v. Wade, among several other cases. In the 1972 case Furman v. Georgia, which led to a de facto moratorium on the death penalty, Marshall articulated his opinion that the death penalty was unconstitutional in all circumstances.

Throughout Marshall's 24-year tenure on the Court, Republican presidents appointed eight consecutive justices, and Marshall gradually became an isolated liberal member of an increasingly conservative Court.

For the latter part of his time on the bench, Marshall was largely relegated to issuing strongly-worded dissents, as the Court reinstated the death penalty and limited affirmative action measures and abortion rights. Marshall retired from the Supreme Court in 1991; Justice Clarence Thomas replaced him.

When Did Thurgood Marshall Die?

Thurgood Marshall died on January 24, 1993, at the age of 84.

Thurgood Marshall V. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X

Thurgood Marshall stands alongside Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X as one of the greatest and most important figures of the American civil rights movement. Although he may be the least popularly celebrated of the three, Marshall was arguably the most instrumental in the movement's achievements toward racial equality.

Marshall's strategy of attacking racial inequality through the courts represented a third way of pursuing racial equality, more pragmatic than King's soaring rhetoric and less polemical than Malcolm X's strident separatism. In the aftermath of Marshall's death, an obituary read: "We make movies about Malcolm X, we get a holiday to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, but every day we live with the legacy of Justice Thurgood Marshall."

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Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 to January 24, 1993) was an American lawyer who was appointed as an associate justice of the Supreme Court in 1967. He was the first African-American to hold the position and served for 24 years, until 1991. Marshall studied law at Howard University.

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This was a law passed by congress and signed by Lyndon B. Johnson saying that you cannot be discriminated against when it comes to voting. This is what today is known as the 15th amendment.

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A Protest march was held starting in Selma to Montgomery. When activists had lined up and crossed the bridge to go to Montgomery, when they were stopped by police. When the marchers refused to turn around, the police sprayed marchers with tear gas and beat them with clubs.

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This act was put in place to end segregation in all states in the United States. This not only ended segregation, but it also said that "no one can be discriminated against based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin." This ended segregation in public and work places. This was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson.

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September 15th, 1963- Birmingham Church Bombing

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September 15th, 1963- Birmingham Church Bombing

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4 African American girls were killed when during a meeting for Civil Rights Activists were held on that sunday morning, a bomb went off. Many were injured as well. This was a leading event to the Civil Rights Act, due to the bomber never being persecuted.

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This Civil Rights Movement was held in Washington, DC to showcase the political and social challenges faced by African-Americans. This march was lead by Martin Luther King, Jr. and involved civil rights activists and religious groups. This is where Martin Luther King, Jr. made his "I Have a Dream" speech.

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Four Black students from Greensboro, NC sat at the"white's only" lunch counter in Woolworth's and were refused service. This sparked many other college students to do this in many towns and states. These were sit in's that sparked many young African-Americans to take part in the Civil Rights Movement, despite the horrific acts of violence against them.

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Rosa Parks was sitting the African american section of the bus, and when a white man came to sit down, due to the overload of the bus, and whites having the privilege to sit in the front, she refused to give up her seat. This started the boycott in Montgomery, Alabama lead by Martin Luther King, Jr. No African-American road the bus for months.

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Sixty years ago, Rosa Parks' quiet and determined refusal to give up her seat on a city bus in Montgomery, Ala. to a white man sparked the beginning of The Montgomery Bus Boycott on Dec. 5, 1955

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Medgar Evers was a man from Mississippi who worked with the NAACP as a Civil Rights Activist, and was the first southern spokesperson for the group. He investigated the Emmett Till case, and brought the man who committed the murder to jail. In 1963, he was murdered in his driveway.

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Information Brown vs Board of Ed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Board_of_Education
Picture Brown vs. Board of Ed: http://www.nea.org/home/brown-vs-board-share-your-story.html
Information Medgar Evers: http://www.biography.com/people/medgar-evers-9542324
Picture Medgar Evers: http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/medgar-evers
Information Bus Boycott: http://www.ushistory.org/us/54b.asp
Picture Bus Boycott: http://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/montgomery-bus-boycott-rosa-parks-civil-rights-movement-anniversary/
Information Greensboro: https://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/01/feb-1-1960-black-students-and-the-greensboro-sit-in/?_r=0
Picture Greensboro: http://americanhistory.si.edu/brown/history/6-legacy/images/sit-in.jpg
Information March on Washington: http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/march-on-washington
Picture March on Washington: http://www.history.com/images/media/video/history_black_history_march_on_washington_sf_1126200/History_Black_History_March_On_Washington_SF_still_624x352.jpg
Information Church Bombing: http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/birmingham-church-bombing
Picture Church Bombing: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/15/16th_Street_Baptist_Church_bombing_girls.jpg
Information Civil Rights Act: http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/civil-rights-act
Picture Civil Rights Act: https://www.nps.gov/subjects/civilrights/images/Lyndon_Johnson_signing_Civil_Rights_Act-_July_2-_1964_LOC_B_2.jpg
Information Selma March:
http://www.blackpast.org/aah/bloody-sunday-selma-alabama-march-7-1965
Pictures Selma March:
https://gerryco23.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/selma-march-bloody-sunday-officers-beating-the-people-from-the-march.jpg
Information Voting Rights:
http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/voting-rights-act
Picture Voting Rights:
http://jewishcurrents.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/johnson_voting_rights_act.jpg
Information Thurgood Marshall:
http://www.biography.com/people/thurgood-marshall-9400241
Picture Thurgood Marshall:
http://www.biography.com/people/thurgood-marshall-9400241

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This case was against the Board of Education in Topeka, Kansas by Oliver T. Brown. This landmark court case allowed students in public schools to no longer be segregated due to color of skin.