Thurgood Marshall

Described as

Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1967 to 1991 (1908–1993)

Other names

Thoroughgood Marshall, Thoroughgood "Thurgood" Marshall

Born

July 2, 1908 · 9 references

Died

January 24, 1993 · 7 references

Born in

Baltimore · 3 references

Died in

Bethesda · 3 references

Buried in

Arlington National Cemetery (1993) · 2 references

Cause of death

cardioplegia; heart failure · 1 reference

Name at birth

Thoroughgood Marshall

Citizen of

United States

Occupation

judge · 1 reference; lawyer; politician; jurist · 2 references; civil rights advocate · 1 reference

Positions held

Solicitor General of the United States (1965–1967); Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (1967–1991); Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (1961–1965)

Political party

Democratic Party

Worked for

Supreme Court of the United States (1967–) · 1 reference

Education

Lincoln University (–1930) · 1 reference; Howard University School of Law (–1933) · 1 reference; Frederick Douglass High School (–1925) · 1 reference

Member of

Alpha Phi Alpha; NAACP; NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund

Awards

Spingarn Medal (1946) · 1 reference; Presidential Medal of Freedom (1993) · 1 reference; Four Freedoms Award – Freedom Medal (1991) · 1 reference; Philadelphia Liberty Medal; Phoenix Award (1991) · 1 reference; honorary doctorate (3 times) (1952, 1954, 1961) · 1 reference; honorary doctor of Johns Hopkins University (1966) · 1 reference; honorary doctor of Brandeis University (1961) · 1 reference; honorary doctor of Victoria University of Wellington (1968) · 1 reference

Field

justice and judicial activities · 1 reference; supreme court · 1 reference; civil and political rights · 1 reference; African Americans · 1 reference; civil rights · 1 reference

Spouse

Vivian Burey Marshall (1929–1955) · 1 reference; Cecilia Suyat Marshall (1955–1993) · 1 reference

Children

Thurgood Marshall, Jr.; John W. Marshall

Wikipedias with a page

43

Wikidata item Q312348 (wikidata.org/wiki/Q312348), public domain (CC0). Copied November 13, 2026.

Thoroughgood "Thurgood" Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an American lawyer 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. Before 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 69–11 vote. 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.
One of Marshall's contributions 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.

Born, in its opening lines

July 2, 1908

Died, in its opening lines

January 24, 1993

From the Wikipedia article “Thurgood Marshall” (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thurgood_Marshall), by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Copied November 13, 2026; not changed.