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Thoroughgood "Thurgood" Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an American civil rights lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1967 until 1991. He was the Supreme Court's first African-American justice. Prior to his judicial service, he was an attorney who fought for civil rights, leading the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Marshall was a prominent figure in the movement to end racial segregation in American public schools. He won 29 of the 32 civil rights cases he argued before the Supreme Court, culminating in the Court's landmark 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which rejected the separate but equal doctrine and held segregation in public education to be unconstitutional. President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Marshall to the Supreme Court in 1967. A staunch liberal, he frequently dissented as the Court became increasingly conservative. Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Marshall attended Lincoln University and the Howard University School of Law. At Howard, he was mentored by Charles Hamilton Houston, who taught his students to be "social engineers" willing to use the law to fight for civil rights. Marshall opened a law practice in Baltimore but soon joined Houston at the NAACP in New York. They worked together on the segregation case of Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada; after Houston returned to Washington, Marshall took his place as special counsel of the NAACP, and he became director-counsel of the newly formed NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. He participated in numerous landmark Supreme Court cases involving civil rights, including Smith v. Allwright, Morgan v. Virginia, Shelley v. Kraemer, McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, Sweatt v. Painter, Brown, and Cooper v. Aaron. His approach to desegregation cases emphasized the use of sociological data to show that segregation was inherently unequal. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed Marshall to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, where he favored a broad interpretation of constitutional protections. Four years later, Johnson appointed him as the U.S. Solicitor General. In 1967, Johnson nominated Marshall to replace Justice Tom C. Clark on the Supreme Court; despite opposition from Southern senators, he was confirmed by a vote of 69 to 11. He was often in the majority during the consistently liberal Warren Court period, but after appointments by President Richard Nixon made the Court more conservative, Marshall frequently found himself in dissent. His closest ally on the Court was Justice William J. Brennan Jr., and the two voted the same way in most cases. Marshall's jurisprudence was pragmatic and drew on his real-world experience. His most influential contribution to constitutional doctrine, the "sliding-scale" approach to the Equal Protection Clause, called on courts to apply a flexible balancing test instead of a more rigid tier-based analysis. He fervently opposed the death penalty, which in his view constituted cruel and unusual punishment; he and Brennan dissented in more than 1,400 cases in which the majority refused to review a death sentence. He favored a robust interpretation of the First Amendment in decisions such as Stanley v. Georgia, and he supported abortion rights in Roe v. Wade and other cases. Marshall retired from the Supreme Court in 1991 and was replaced by Clarence Thomas. He died in 1993. Early life and education Thurgood Marshall was born on July 2, 1908, in Baltimore, Maryland, to Norma and William Canfield Marshall.: 30, 35  His father held various jobs as a waiter in hotels, in clubs, and on railroad cars, and his mother was an elementary school teacher.: 41, 45  The family moved to New York City in search of better employment opportunities not long after Thurgood's birth; they returned to Baltimore when he was six years old.: 50  He was an energetic and boisterous child who frequently found himself in trouble.: 37  Following legal cases was one of William's hobbies, and Thurgood oftentimes went to court with him to observe the proceedings.: 37  Marshall later said that his father "never told me to become a lawyer, but he turned me into one ... He taught me how to argue, challenged my logic on every point, by making me prove every statement I made, even if we were discussing the weather.": 38 Marshall attended the Colored High and Training School (later Frederick Douglass High School) in Baltimore, graduating in 1925 with honors.: 69, 79 : 34  He then enrolled at Lincoln University in Chester County, Pennsylvania, the oldest college for African Americans in the United States.: 43  The mischievous Marshall was suspended for two weeks in the wake of a hazing incident, but he earned good grades in his classes and led the school's debating team to numerous victories.: 43–44, 46  His classmates included the poet Langston Hughes.: 88  Upon his graduation with honors in 1930 with a bachelor's degree in American literature and philosophy,: 46  Marshall—being unable to attend the all-white University of Maryland Law School—applied to Howard University School of Law in Washington, D.C., and was admitted.: 107  At Howard, he was mentored by Charles Hamilton Houston, who taught his students to be "social engineers" willing to use the law as a vehicle to fight for civil rights.: 56 : 1499  Marshall graduated in June 1933 ranked first in his class, and he passed the Maryland bar examination later that year.: 59, 61  Legal career Marshall started a law practice in Baltimore, but it was not financially successful, partially because he spent much of his time working for the benefit of the community.: 1499  He volunteered with the Baltimore branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Persons (NAACP).: 477  In 1935, Marshall and Houston brought suit against the University of Maryland on behalf of Donald Gaines Murray, an African American whose application to the university's law school had been rejected on account of his race.: 78 : 237–238  In that case—Murray v. Pearson—Judge Eugene O'Dunne ordered that Murray be admitted, and the Maryland Court of Appeals affirmed, holding that it violated equal protection to admit white students to the law school while keeping blacks from being educated in-state.: 231, 246, 256  The decision was never appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States and therefore did not apply nationwide, but it pleased Marshall, who later said that he had filed the lawsuit "to get even with the bastards" who had kept him from attending the school himself.: 47  In 1936, Marshall joined Houston, who had been appointed as the NAACP's special counsel, in New York City, serving as his assistant.: 477 : 19  They worked together on the landmark case of Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada (1938).: 477  When Lloyd Lionel Gaines's application to the University of Missouri's law school was rejected on account of his race, he filed suit, arguing t.... Discover the Gregory Marshall Smith popular books. 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