Thurgood Marshall

Born July 2, 1908 in Baltimore, Maryland.

His father, William Marshall, the grandson of a slave, 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.His mother, Norma, was a kindergarten teacher.

*By second grade, young Marshall, weary of being teased about his unusual name and equally weary of writing it out, shortened it to “Thuroughgood, according to About.com.

*In high school, Marshall earned decent grades, but had a tendency to stir up trouble in the classroom. As punishment for some of his misdeeds, he was ordered to memorize portions of the U.S. Constitution. By the time he left high school, Thurgood Marshall knew the entire Constitution by memory, according to About.com

*Marshall always knew that he wanted to go to college, but realized his parents couldn't afford to pay his tuition. Therefore, he began saving money while he was in high school, working as a delivery boy and a waiter, according to About.com.

*Thurgood Marshall went to study dentistry at Lincoln University, which he wasn't doing well at and noticed that he should be a lawyer because he was great at speeches, according to About.com.

• Marshall opened his own law practice in Baltimore in 1933 at the age of 25. He had few clients at first and most of those cases involved minor charges, such as traffic tickets and petty thefts.
• Marshall became increasingly active in the local NAACP, recruiting new members for its Baltimore branch. Because he was well-educated, light-skinned, and dressed well, however, he sometimes found it difficult to find common ground with some African Americans.
• In 1938, Marshall was named chief counsel to the NAACP in New York.
• Thrilled about having a steady income Thurgood moved to Harlem, New York.

Date: 11/5/1935

On this date in 1935, the Maryland Supreme Court ruled against segregation at the University of Maryland Law School.

The case, Murray vs. Pearson had been attacking the school legally since that summer and successfully sued the University of Maryland to admit a young African American Amherst University graduate named Donald Gaines Murray.
Represented by Charles Houston of the NAACP, his partner and Thurgood Marshall won his major first civil rights case in this ruling.

In winning the rights of Murray to enter the University of Maryland Law School, Marshall argued expressive in the case, "What's at stake here is more than the rights of my client. It's the moral commitment stated in our country's creed."

Marshall's achievement led him to being by 1950 one of the county's leading civil rights lawyers, leading the movement for Black rights in the south.

•Brown v Board of Education

•In 1951, a court decision in Topeka, Kansas became a boost for Thurgood Marshall's most significant case. Oliver Brown of Topeka had sued that city's Board of Education, claiming that his daughter(Olivia Brown) was forced to travel a long distance from her home just to attend a segregated school. Brown wanted his daughter to attend the school nearest their home — a school designated for whites only. The U.S. District Court of Kansas disagreed, asserting that the African American school offered an education equal in quality to the white schools of Topeka. Marshall headed up the appeal of the Brown case, which he combined with four other similar cases and filed as Brown v Board of Education. The case came before the U.S. Supreme Court in December 1952.

•Marshall made it clear in his opening statements to the Supreme Court that what he sought was not merely a resolution for the five individual cases; his goal was to end racial segregation in schools. He argued that segregation caused blacks to feel inferior. The opposing lawyer argued that integration would harm white children.

• But the justices did not render a decision; instead, they requested that the attorneys supply more information. Their main question: Did the attorneys believe that the 14th Amendment, which addresses citizenship rights, prohibited segregation in schools? Marshall and his team went to work to prove that it did.

•After hearing the case again in December 1953, the Court did not come to a decision until May 17, 1954. Chief Justice Earl Warren announced that the Court had come to the unanimous decision that segregation in the public schools violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

Thurgood Marshall fought for the right's of black's for the majority off his law career. He guided the litigation that destroyed the legal basis of the Jim Crow segregation. Thurgood Marshall was always fighting for justice which made blacks rise up in society. Cases such as Brown vs. Board Of Education helped legal segregation of schools come to a stop although segregation was still at large in many schools.

On June 13, 1967, President Lyndon Johnson nominated Marshall to the Supreme Court. President Johnson said that this was "the right thing to do, the right time to do it, the right man and the right place." This was a tremendous accomplishment for Thurgood Marshall especially since he was the first African American to be appointed to the U.S Supreme Court which was the highest of all courts. Thurgood Marshall was confirmed as an Associate Justice by a Senate vote of 69–11 on August 30, 1967. Thurgood Marshall served on the supreme court for the next 24 for years. During his time in the Supreme Court Marshall would fight for abortion rights and opposing the death penalty with another Supreme Court Justice member named William Brennan. Marshall and Brennan came to conclusion in a case called Furman v. Georgia that the death penalty was unconstitutional. Marshall also fought for individual rights but mainly the rights of criminal suspects against the government.Marshall retired from the Supreme Court in 1991 and was reported unhappy that President George H. W. Bush would decide Marshall's replacement. Thurgood Marshall was replaced by Clarence Thomas.

"We can always stick together when we are losing, but tend to find means of breaking up when we're winning."-Thurgood Marshall

"To those of use who know that struggle is far from over, history has another lesson. It tells us how deeply rooted habits of prejudice are."-Thurgood Marshall

"It is interesting to me that the very people…that would object to sending their white children to school with Negroes are eating food that has been prepared, served, and almost put in their mouths by the mothers of those children."-Thurgood Marshall

Thurgood Marshall made his mark in civil rights and in black history as one of the most well known figures just like Dr. Martin Luther King j.r and Malcolm X. Although Thurgood Marshall did many things to better the future of blacks he wasnt the only person who made a change. Thurgood Marshall will be a face never forgotten by blacks and whites across the nation.

"Thurgood Marshall." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 18 Feb. 2014. Web. 19 Feb. 2014

"Thurgood Marshall." About.com 20th Century History. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Feb. 2014.