About Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993)
Early Life of Justice Marshall
Born in Baltimore, Maryland on July 2, 1908, Thurgood Marshall was the great-grandson of a slave. His father, William Marshall, instilled in him an appreciation for the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law. After completing high school in 1925, Thurgood followed his brother, William Aubrey Marshall, at the historically black Lincoln University in Chester, Penn. His classmates at Lincoln included a distinguished group of future Black leaders such as the poet and author Langston Hughes, the future President of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, and musician Cab Calloway. Just before graduation, he married his first wife, Vivian "Buster" Burey. Their 25 year marriage ended with her death from cancer in 1955.
Legal Career
In 1930, he applied to the University of Maryland Law School, but was denied admission because he was Black. This event directed his future professional life. Thurgood was accepted at the Howard University Law School that same year, under the immediate influence of the dynamic new dean, Charles Hamilton Houston, who instilled i the desire to apply the tenets of the Constitution to all Americans. Paramount in Houston's outlook was the need to overturn the 1898 Supreme Court ruling, Plessy v. Ferguson which established the legal doctrine called, "separate but equal."
Marshall's first major court case came in 1933 when he successfully sued the University of Maryland to admit a young African American Amherst University graduate named Donald Gaines Murray. Applauding Marshall's victory, author H.L. Mencken wrote that the decision of denial by the University of Maryland Law School was "brutal and absurd," and they should not object to the "presence among them of a self-respecting and ambitious young Afro-American well prepared for his studies by four years of hard work in a class A college."
Thurgood Marshall followed his Howard University mentor, Charles Hamilton Houston to New York and later became Chief Counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored people (NAACP). Mr. Marshall was asked by the United Nations and the United Kingdom to help draft the constitutions of the emerging African nation of Ghana and what is now Tanzania.
Influence
After amassing an impressive record of Supreme Court challenges to state-sponsored discrimination, including the landmark Brown v. Board decision 1954, President John F. Kennedy appointed Thurgood Marshall to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Marshall wrote over 150 decisions including support for the rights of immigrants, limiting government intrusion in cases involving illegal search and seizure, double jeopardy, and right to privacy issues. Biographers Michael Davis and Hunter Clark note that, "none of his (Marshall's) 98 majority decisions was ever reversed by the Supreme Court."
In 1965 President Lyndon Johnson appointed Judge Marshall to the office of U.S. Solicitor General. Before his subsequent nomination to the United States Supreme Court in 1967, Thurgood Marshall won 14 of the 19 cases on behalf of the government. Thurgood Marshall represented and won more cases before the U.S. Supreme Court than any other American. Until his retirement, Justice Marshall established a record for supporting the voiceless American. He developed a profound sensitivity to injustice by way of the crucible of racial discrimination in this country.
As an Associate Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall left a legacy that expands that early sensitivity to include all of America's voiceless. Justice Marshall died on January 24, 1993.
A Message
from Provost Allan Havis
It is a special joy to welcome all the new and continuing students to Thurgood Marshall College. TMC has a great legacy, promoting cultural tolerance, social equality, and civic justice. More ...
