Thurgood Marshall Biography Quotes 12 Report mistakes

Early Life and Education
Thurgood Marshall was born on July 2, 1908, in Baltimore, Maryland, to William Canfield Marshall, a steward at a country club who loved courtroom arguments, and Norma Arica Williams, a schoolteacher devoted to learning. His family emphasized debate, discipline, and pride, and his father often took him to observe trials, seeding a fascination with the law. Originally named Thoroughgood, he shortened his name in childhood. He graduated from Frederick Douglass High School and then attended Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, where he encountered a vibrant intellectual community that included figures such as Langston Hughes. In 1929 he married Vivian Burey, whose steadiness and encouragement shaped his early career.

Denied admission to the University of Maryland School of Law because of segregation, he enrolled at Howard University School of Law in Washington, D.C. Under the tutelage of Dean Charles Hamilton Houston, who trained a generation of civil rights lawyers to be social engineers, Marshall graduated first in his class in 1933. Houston became his mentor and the central influence on his methodical, constitutional approach to dismantling Jim Crow.

Rise as a Civil Rights Lawyer
Marshall began private practice in Baltimore and quickly allied with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He worked with Houston to challenge segregation at the University of Maryland in Murray v. Pearson (1936), an early victory that foreshadowed the strategy they would carry nationwide. By 1940, Marshall became the founding director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, working closely with colleagues including Robert L. Carter, Jack Greenberg, Constance Baker Motley, Spottswood Robinson, and Oliver Hill, and with NAACP leaders Walter White and Roy Wilkins.

He argued and won a series of Supreme Court cases that chipped away at legalized segregation and racial exclusion: Smith v. Allwright (1944) ended the white primary; Morgan v. Virginia (1946) invalidated segregation on interstate buses; Sweatt v. Painter (1950) and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents (1950) undermined separate-but-equal in graduate education. These cases built the doctrinal foundation for the desegregation of public schools.

Brown v. Board of Education and National Leadership
Marshall led the legal team that pressed the consolidated school cases known as Brown v. Board of Education (1954). With colleagues Carter, Greenberg, Motley, Robinson, Hill, and Louis Redding, he assembled a record that combined constitutional argument with social science evidence, including the work of psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark. In 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren announced a unanimous decision declaring segregated public schools unconstitutional. Marshall's courtroom adversary in one of the companion cases was the eminent lawyer John W. Davis, illustrating the historic scale of the confrontation. As the Court struggled with remedies in Brown II (1955), Marshall and his team continued to litigate and negotiate implementation across the South, often facing intimidation and danger on the ground. He personally experienced threats, including a harrowing episode in Tennessee after the Columbia cases, underscoring the personal costs of civil rights advocacy.

By the mid-1960s, Marshall had argued before the Supreme Court dozens of times, prevailing in the vast majority of his cases. His leadership at LDF made him one of the most effective courtroom advocates in American history.

Federal Judge and Solicitor General
President John F. Kennedy appointed Marshall to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 1961. After a contentious delay in the Senate, he was confirmed in 1962. On that court, he wrote influential opinions on due process, immigration, and civil rights enforcement, earning a reputation for clarity and fairness.

In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him Solicitor General of the United States, the federal government's chief advocate before the Supreme Court. Marshall was the first African American to hold that position, and he argued major cases on behalf of the United States with the same rigor that had marked his civil rights work. Johnson, who admired Marshall's principled advocacy, would soon entrust him with an even larger role.

Justice of the Supreme Court
In 1967, President Johnson nominated Marshall to the Supreme Court. After Senate confirmation, he became the first African American justice in the Court's history. He served from 1967 to 1991 across the Warren, Burger, and Rehnquist Courts, joining and helping shape the liberal wing. He often aligned with Justice William J. Brennan Jr., and his colleagues included Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, Byron White, Potter Stewart, Harry Blackmun, Lewis Powell Jr., John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia, and, later, Anthony Kennedy. Chief Justices Earl Warren, Warren E. Burger, and William H. Rehnquist presided during his tenure.

Marshall's opinions showcased a broad commitment to individual rights, equality under law, and procedural fairness. He wrote the Court's opinion in Benton v. Maryland (1969), applying the Double Jeopardy Clause to the states, and in Stanley v. Georgia (1969), recognizing a strong privacy interest within the home. He was an unwavering critic of the death penalty, explaining in his Furman v. Georgia (1972) concurrence that capital punishment was inconsistent with contemporary standards of decency and the Eighth Amendment; he later dissented when the Court reinstated capital punishment in Gregg v. Georgia (1976). In cases touching criminal procedure, equal protection, and the First Amendment, he emphasized the Constitution's protection of the poor, marginalized communities, and criminal defendants. In the affirmative action debates, including Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), he defended race-conscious remedies as necessary to remedy entrenched discrimination.

Personal Life and Character
Marshall's personal life was marked by devotion and resilience. His first wife, Vivian Burey Marshall, died of cancer in 1955, shortly after Brown's implementation phase began. Later that year he married Cecilia Suyat Marshall, whose support anchored his demanding public life; together they raised two sons, Thurgood Marshall Jr. and John W. Marshall. Known for warmth, wit, and storytelling, he mentored generations of young lawyers. His law clerks included Elena Kagan, who later joined the Supreme Court, carrying forward elements of his jurisprudential legacy.

Retirement, Death, and Legacy
Marshall retired in 1991 as his health declined, remarking with characteristic candor that age had caught up with him. President George H. W. Bush nominated Clarence Thomas as his successor, a transition that underscored shifting judicial philosophies. Thurgood Marshall died on January 24, 1993, in Bethesda, Maryland, and was interred at Arlington National Cemetery.

Marshall stands as a central architect of the legal strategy that dismantled state-enforced segregation and broadened the meaning of constitutional equality. From his apprenticeship under Charles Hamilton Houston and partnership with colleagues such as Robert Carter, Jack Greenberg, Constance Baker Motley, and Spottswood Robinson, to his decades on the federal bench, he translated legal argument into social transformation. Honored nationwide, including in the naming of Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport and institutions of learning, his life traces a through line from courtroom advocacy to constitutional principle: the law must be a living safeguard for liberty, fairness, and human dignity.

Our collection contains 12 quotes who is written by Thurgood, under the main topics: Witty One-Liners - Ethics & Morality - Justice - Freedom - Equality.

Other people realated to Thurgood: Clarence Thomas (Judge), Medgar Evers (Activist), Ramsey Clark (Public Servant), Daisy Bates (Activist), Mordecai Wyatt Johnson (Educator), Floyd Abrams (Lawyer), Juan Williams (Journalist), Carl T. Rowan (Journalist), John Hope Franklin (Historian), Abe Fortas (Judge)

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