20 Facts About Thurgood Marshall

1. Thurgood Marshall 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.

2. Thurgood Marshall 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.

3. Thurgood Marshall opened a law practice in Baltimore but soon joined Houston at the NAACP in New York.

4. Thurgood Marshall 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.

5. Thurgood Marshall 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.

6. Thurgood Marshall retired from the Supreme Court in 1991 and was replaced by Clarence Thomas.

7. Thurgood Marshall 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.

8. Thurgood Marshall attended the Colored High and Training School in Baltimore, graduating in 1925 with honors.

9. Thurgood 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.

10. Thurgood Marshall volunteered with the Baltimore branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Persons.

11. Thurgood Marshall called numerous social scientists and other expert witnesses to testify regarding the harms of segregation; these included the psychology professor Ken Clark, who testified that segregation in schools caused self-hatred among African-American students and inflicted damage that was "likely to endure as long as the conditions of segregation exist".

12. Thurgood Marshall dissented when a majority held in the Fourth Amendment case of United States ex rel.

13. Thurgood Marshall defended the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in South Carolina v Katzenbach and Katzenbach v Morgan, winning both cases.

14. Thurgood Marshall took the constitutional oath of office on October 2, 1967, becoming the first African-American to serve as a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

15. Thurgood Marshall felt strongly that the Miranda doctrine should be expanded and fully enforced.

16. Thurgood Marshall emphasized equality in his free speech opinions, writing in Chicago Police Dept.

17. Thurgood Marshall wed Vivian "Buster" Burey on September 4, 1929, while he was a student at Lincoln University.

18. Thurgood Marshall served as a visiting judge on the Second Circuit for a week in January 1992, and he received the American Bar Association's highest award in August of that year.

19. Thurgood Marshall lay in repose in the Great Hall of the Supreme Court, and thousands thronged there to pay their respects; more than four thousand attended his funeral service at the National Cathedral.

20. Thurgood Marshall is the namesake of streets and schools throughout the nation.