Who was the first african american us supreme court justice?

Thurgood Marshall was born Thoroughgood Marshall on June 2, 1908 in Baltimore, Maryland. Tired of having his friends poke fun at his first name, he decided to try to improve the situation and, at the age of six, legally changed it to Thurgood. As a young man, perhaps the person who had the most influence on him was his father, a man who always told his son to stand up for his beliefs. His father's influence was so strong that, later in life, Marshall once said that his father "never told me to become a lawyer, he turned me into one."

Early Life

Arguably, Marshall's introduction to law came in high school when, as a punishment for a prank he had pulled, the school's principal made him read the U.S. Constitution. Marshall immediately liked the document and set about memorizing various parts of it. He took special interest in Article III and the Bill of Rights. Article III establishes the judicial branch of government and the Bill of Rights lists the rights that all American citizens are supposed to enjoy. Growing up in an era when Jim Crow laws still permeated much of the country, Marshall knew that many African-Americans were not enjoying all of their constitutional rights. From an early age, Marshall was aware of racial injustices in America, and he decided to do something about them. Moreover, he also knew that the courts might be the best means for doing so.

Education

Marshall attended the all-black Lincoln University (the oldest African-American institution of higher education in the country) and, after being rejected from the University of Maryland School of Law because of his race, went on to attend law school at Howard University and graduated first in his class. It was at Howard University that Marshall met Charles Hamilton Houston, the vice-dean of the law school. In 1935, Houston directed the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, and Marshall was his right-hand man.

It was during this time that Marshall realized that the holding in Plessy was inherently flawed, for "separate" could never be "equal." Marshall had always felt that the only way for African-Americans, or anyone for that matter, to succeed was to receive an education. Yet, the discrepancy in the caliber of education for whites and blacks was made all too apparent to him when, one day while traveling with Houston, Marshall witnessed a black child biting into an orange. He had received such a poor education that he neither knew what it was nor how to properly eat it. From this point on, Marshall and Houston were dedicated to a strategy which aimed at ending segregation.

Legal Career

Together with Houston, Marshall participated in the cases Murray v. Maryland (1936) and Missouri ex rel Gaines v. Canada (1938). When Houston returned to private practice in 1938, Marshall took over the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and argued Sweat v. Painter (1950) and McLaurin v. Oklahoma Board of Regents of Higher Education (1950). Having won these cases, and thus, establishing precedents for chipping away Jim Crow laws in higher education, Marshall succeeded in having the Supreme Court declare segregated public schools unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education (1954).

After Brown, Marshall argued many more court cases in support of civil rights. His zeal for ensuring the rights of all citizens regardless of race caught the attention of President John F. Kennedy, who appointed him to the U.S. Court of Appeals. In 1965, Lyndon Johnson appointed him to the post of Solicitor General (this person argues cases on behalf of the U.S. government before the Supreme Court; it is the third highest office in the Justice Department). Finally, in 1967, President Johnson appointed him to the U.S. Supreme Court. Until his retirement from the Court in 1991, Marshall continued to strive to protect the rights of all citizens. Thurgood Marshall died in 1993, leaving behind a legacy that earned him the nickname "Mr. Civil Rights." Before his funeral, his flag-draped casket was laid in state in the Great Hall of the Supreme Court. He was only the second justice to be given this honor.

PUBLISHED October 2, 2020

Thurgood Marshall poses in his New York residence on September 11, 1962, after the Senate confirmation of his nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals. Five years later, Marshall would become the first Black man to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Decades before Thurgood Marshall was sworn into the U.S. Supreme Court on October 2, 1967, the man who would become its first Black justice had already transformed American law. Known as “Mr. Civil Rights,” Marshall was one of the architects of the civil rights movement—a passionately progressive attorney who helped end school segregation.

During his barrier-breaking years on the Supreme Court, Marshall continued to advocate for civil and human rights. Yet Marshall’s tenure is perhaps best remembered for his stirring dissent against his increasingly conservative colleagues’ dismantling from the mid-1970s through the 1980s of the equal-protection laws he had championed.

Early life and career

Born in Baltimore in 1908, Marshall was the son of a teacher and a railroad porter. His parents had named him Thoroughgood after his paternal grandfather, who was born into slavery and gained his freedom by escaping from the South, but Marshall shortenedthe name in grade school because he disliked its length.

Marshall grew up during the so-called Jim Crow era, the century from the end of the Civil War until 1968 when state laws enshrined—and the Supreme Court upheld—racial discrimination and segregation in nearly every walk of life. Marshall attended a segregated high school in Baltimore and Lincoln University, a historically Black university near Oxford, Pennsylvania. His first-choice law school, the University of Maryland School of Law, did not admit Black students, so he attended Howard University School of Law, another historically Black university, in Washington, D.C., graduating first in his class in 1933. (Jim...

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On June 13, 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson nominated distinguished civil rights lawyer Thurgood Marshall to be the first African American justice to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States. Marshall had already made his mark in American law, having won 29 of the 32 cases he argued before the Supreme Court, most notably the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), which ruled school segregation unconstitutional. Marshall had also been appointed to the Second Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 and U.S. Solicitor General by President Johnson in 1965.

As an associate justice on the highest court in America, Marshall continued his lifelong fight against discrimination to protect the constitutional rights of the most vulnerable Americans. He retired from the Supreme Court in 1991 after 24 years on the bench and died on January 24, 1993.

In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s June 13, 1967 nomination of civil rights lawyer Thurgood Marshall to be the first African American justice to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States, the National Archives in Washington, DC will display a facsimile of the nomination and Justice Marshall’s opinion in the landmark affirmative action case Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978) in which the Court upheld the constitutionality of considering race in college admissions decisions. The documents was on display from June 8 – July 26, 2017.

The National Archives Museum’s “Featured Document” exhibit is made possible in part by the National Archives Foundation through the generous support of Ford Motor Company Fund.

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