Thurgood Marshall

For people and institutions etc. named after Thurgood Marshall, see Thurgood Marshall (disambiguation).

Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall, 1976.
Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court
In office October 2, 1967 – October 1, 1991
Nominated by	Lyndon B. Johnson
Preceded by	Tom C. Clark
Succeeded by	Clarence Thomas
32nd United States Solicitor General
In office August 1965 – August 1967
President	Lyndon B. Johnson
Preceded by	Archibald Cox
Succeeded by	Erwin N. Griswold
Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
In office August 1961 – August 1965
Nominated by	John F. Kennedy
Preceded by	New Seat
Succeeded by	Wilfred Feinberg
Personal details
Born	July 2, 1908(1908-07-02) Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.
Died	January 24, 1993(1993-01-24) (aged 84) Bethesda, Maryland, U.S.
Spouse(s)	Vivian "Buster" Burey (1929-1955) (her death) Cecilia Suyat (1955-1993) (his death)
Alma mater	Lincoln University Howard University School of Law
Religion	Episcopalian

Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, serving from October 1967 until October 1991. Marshall was the Court's 96th justice and its first African-American justice.

Before becoming a judge, Marshall was a lawyer who was best remembered for his high success rate in arguing before the Supreme Court and for the victory in Brown v. Board of Education. He argued more cases before the United States Supreme Court than anyone else in history. He served on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit after being appointed by President John F. Kennedy and then served as the Solicitor General after being appointed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965. President Johnson nominated him to the United States Supreme Court in 1967.

Early life

Marshall was born in Baltimore, Maryland on July 2, 1908, the great-grandson of a slave who was born in modern-day Democratic Republic of the Congo. His grandfather was also a slave. His original name was Thoroughgood, but he shortened it to Thurgood in second grade because he disliked spelling it. His father, William Marshall, who was a railroad porter, and his mother Norma, a teacher, instilled in him an appreciation for the Constitution of the United States and the rule of law.

Education

Marshall graduated from Frederick Douglass High School in Baltimore in 1925 and from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania in 1930. At Lincoln University, Marshall was initiated as a member of the first black fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha.

Marshall wanted to apply to his hometown law school, the University of Maryland School of Law, but the dean said he would not be accepted because of the school's segregation policy. Marshall instead attended Howard University School of Law, where he graduated from, first in his class, in 1933. Three years later, Marshall would successfully represent his client in bringing suit against the University of Maryland Law School for its policy, ending segregation there (see Murray v. Pearson).

Marriage and family

Marshall was married twice. He married Vivian "Buster" Burey in 1929. After her death in February 1955, Marshall married Cecilia Suyat in December of that year. They were married until his own death in 1993 and had two sons together, Thurgood Marshall, Jr., a former top aide to President Bill Clinton, and John W. Marshall, a former United States Marshals Service Director and Virginia Secretary of Public Safety.

Law career

Thurgood Marshall in 1936 at the beginning of his career with the NAACP

Marshall set up a private practice in Baltimore in 1936. That year, he began working with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Baltimore.

He won his first major civil rights case, Murray v. Pearson, 169 Md. 478 (1936). This was the first challenge of the "separate but equal" doctrine that was part of the Plessy v. Ferguson decision. His co-counsel on the case, Charles Hamilton Houston, developed the strategy. Marshall represented Donald Gaines Murray, a black Amherst College graduate with excellent credentials, who had been denied admission to the University of Maryland Law School because of its segregation policy. Black students in Maryland wanting to study law had to accept one of three options, attend: Morgan College, the Princess Anne Academy, or out-of-state black institutions.

In 1935, Thurgood Marshall argued the case for Murray, showing that neither of the in-state institutions offered a law school and that such schools were entirely unequal in quality to the University of Maryland. Marshall and Houston expected to lose and intended to appeal to the federal courts. The Maryland Court of Appeals ruled against the state of Maryland and its Attorney General, who represented the University of Maryland, stating, "Compliance with the Constitution cannot be deferred at the will of the state. Whatever system is adopted for legal education must furnish equality of treatment now." While it was a moral victory, the state court's ruling had no authority outside of Maryland.

Chief Counsel for the NAACP

At the age of 32, Marshall won his first U.S. Supreme Court case, Chambers v. Florida, 309 U.S. 227 (1940). That same year, he was appointed Chief Counsel for the NAACP. He argued many other civil rights cases before the Supreme Court, most of them successfully, including Smith v. Allwright, 321 U.S. 649 (1944); Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948); Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U.S. 629 (1950); and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, 339 U.S. 637 (1950). His most famous case as a lawyer was Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), the case in which the Supreme Court ruled that "separate but equal" public education, as established by Plessy v. Ferguson, was not applicable to public education because it could never be truly equal. In total, Marshall won 29 out of the 32 cases he argued before the Supreme Court.

During the 1950s, Thurgood Marshall developed a friendly relationship with J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In 1956, for example, he privately praised Hoover's campaign to discredit T.R.M. Howard, a maverick civil rights leader from Mississippi. During a national speaking tour, Howard had criticized the FBI's failure to seriously investigate cases such as the 1955 killers of George W. Lee and Emmett Till. In a private letter to Hoover, Marshall "attacked Howard as a 'rugged individualist' who did not speak for the NAACP." Two years earlier Howard had arranged for Marshall to deliver a well-received speech at a rally of his Regional Council of Negro Leadership in Mound Bayou, Mississippi only days before the Brown decision. According to historians David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, “Marshall’s disdain for Howard was almost visceral. [He] 'disliked Howard’s militant tone and maverick stance' and 'was well aware that Hoover’s attack served to take the heat off the NAACP and provided opportunities for closer collaboration [between the NAACP and the FBI] in civil rights.'"

Court of Appeals and Solicitor General

President John F. Kennedy appointed Marshall to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 1961 to a new seat created on May 19, 1961 by 75 Stat. 80. A group of Senators from the South, led by Mississippi's James Eastland, held up his confirmation, so he served for the first several months under a recess appointment. Marshall remained on that court until 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him to be the United States Solicitor General, the first African American to hold the office. As Solicitor General, he won 14 out of the 19 cases that he argued for the government.

U.S. Supreme Court

Thurgood Marshall photographed in 1967 in the Oval Office

On June 13, 1967, President Johnson nominated Marshall to the Supreme Court following the retirement of Justice Tom C. Clark, saying that this was "the right thing to do, the right time to do it, the right man and the right place." Marshall was confirmed as an Associate Justice by a Senate vote of 69–11 on August 30, 1967. He was the 96th person to hold the position, and the first African American. President Johnson confidently predicted to one biographer, Doris Kearns Goodwin, that a lot of black baby boys would be named "Thurgood" in honor of this choice.

Marshall served on the Court for the next twenty-four years, compiling a liberal record that included strong support for Constitutional protection of individual rights, especially the rights of criminal suspects against the government. His most frequent ally on the Court (the pair rarely voted at odds) was Justice William Brennan, who consistently joined him in supporting abortion rights and opposing the death penalty. Brennan and Marshall concluded in Furman v. Georgia that the death penalty was, in all circumstances, unconstitutional, and never accepted the legitimacy of Gregg v. Georgia, which ruled four years later that the death penalty was constitutional in some circumstances. Thereafter, Brennan or Marshall dissented from every denial of certiorari in a capital case and from every decision upholding a sentence of death.^{[citation needed]} In 1987, Marshall gave a controversial speech on the occasion of the bicentennial celebrations of the Constitution of the United States. Marshall stated,

"the government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and major social transformations to attain the system of constitutional government and its respect for the freedoms and individual rights, we hold as fundamental today."

In conclusion Marshall stated

"Some may more quietly commemorate the suffering, struggle, and sacrifice that has triumphed over much of what was wrong with the original document, and observe the anniversary with hopes not realized and promises not fulfilled. I plan to celebrate the bicentennial of the Constitution as a living document, including the Bill of Rights and the other amendments protecting individual freedoms and human rights."

Although best remembered for jurisprudence in the fields of civil rights and criminal procedure, Marshall made significant contributions to other areas of the law as well. In Teamsters v. Terry he held that the Seventh Amendment entitled the plaintiff to a jury trial in a suit against a labor union for breach of duty of fair representation. In TSC Industries, Inc. v. Northway, Inc. he articulated a formulation for the standard of materiality in United States securities law that is still applied and used today. In Cottage Savings Association v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, he weighed in on the income tax consequences of the Savings and Loan crisis, permitting a savings and loan association to deduct a loss from an exchange of mortgage participation interests. In Personnel Administrator MA v. Feeney, Marshall wrote a dissent saying that a law that gave hiring preference to veterans over non-veterans was unconstitutional because of its inequitable impact on women.

Among his many law clerks were attorneys who went on to become judges themselves, such as Judge Douglas Ginsburg of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals; Judge Ralph Winter of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit; Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan; as well as notable law professors Dan Kahan, Cass Sunstein, Eben Moglen, Susan Low Bloch, Martha Minow, Rick Pildes, Paul Gewirtz, and Mark Tushnet (and editor of Thurgood Marshall: His Speeches, Writings, Arguments, Opinions and Reminiscences, cited hereafter); and law school deans Paul Mahoney of University of Virginia School of Law, and Richard Revesz of New York University School of Law. See, List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Marshall retired from the Supreme Court in 1991, and was reportedly unhappy that it would fall to President George H. W. Bush to name his replacement. Bush nominated Clarence Thomas to replace Marshall.

Death and legacy

U.S. circuit judges Robert A. Katzmann, Damon J. Keith, and Sonia Sotomayor (later Associate Justice) at a 2004 exhibit on the Fourteenth Amendment, Thurgood Marshall, and Brown v. Board of Education

Marshall died of heart failure at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, at 2:58 pm on January 24, 1993 at the age of 84. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. His second wife and their two sons survived him.

Marshall left all of his personal papers and notes to the Library of Congress. The Librarian of Congress, James H. Billington, opened Marshall's papers for immediate use by scholars, journalists and the public, insisting that this was Marshall's intent. The Marshall family and several of his close associates disputed this claim. The decision to make the documents public was supported by the American Library Association. A list of the archived manuscripts is available.

There are numerous memorials to Justice Marshall. One, an eight foot statute, stands in Lawyers Mall adjacent to the Maryland State House. The statute, dedicated on October 22, 1996, depicts Marshall as a young lawyer and it is placed just a few feet away from where the Old Maryland Supreme Court Building stood; the court where Marshall had argued discrimination cases leading up to the Brown decision. The primary office building for the federal court system, located on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C., is named in honor of Justice Marshall and contains a statue of him in the atrium. In 1976, Texas Southern University renamed their law school after the sitting justice. In 1980, the University of Maryland School of Law opened a new library which they named the Thurgood Marshall Law Library. In 2000, the historic Twelfth Street YMCA Building located in the Shaw neighborhood of Washington, D.C. was renamed the Thurgood Marshall Center. The major airport serving Baltimore and the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC, was renamed the Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport on October 1, 2005. The 2009 General Convention of the Episcopal Church added Marshall to the church's liturgical calendar of "Holy Women, Holy Men: Celebrating the Saints," designating May 17 as his feast day.

The University of California, San Diego renamed its Third College after Thurgood Marshall in 1993.

In 2006 Thurgood, a one-man play written by George Stevens, Jr., premiered at the Westport Country Playhouse, starring James Earl Jones and directed by Leonard Foglia. Later it opened Broadway at the Booth Theatre on April 30, 2008 starring Laurence Fishburne. On 24th February 2011, HBO screened a filmed version of the play which Fishburne had performed at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The production was described by the Baltimore Sun as "one of the most frank, informed and searing discussions of race you will ever see on TV.". On 16th February 2011 a screening of the film was hosted by the White House as part of its celebrations of Black History Month

Thurgood Marshall Award

The Legislative Assembly of Puerto Rico instituted in 1993 the annual Thurgood Marshall Award, given to the top student in civil rights at each of Puerto Rico's four law schools. The awardees are selected by the Commonwealth's Attorney General and includes a $500 monetary award.

Timeline

Marshall in 1957

• 1908 – Born July 2 at Baltimore, Maryland, United States.
• 1930 – Graduates with honors from Lincoln University (cum laude).
• 1934 – Receives law degree from Howard University (magna cum laude) and begins private practice in Baltimore, Maryland.
• 1934 – Begins to work for Baltimore branch of NAACP.
• 1935 – Working with Charles Houston, wins first major civil rights case, Murray v. Pearson.
• 1936 – Becomes assistant special counsel for NAACP in New York.
• 1940 – Wins Chambers v. Florida, the first of twenty-nine Supreme Court victories.
• 1943 – Won case for integration of schools in Hillburn, New York.
• 1944 – Successfully argues Smith v. Allwright, overthrowing the South's "white primary".
• 1948 – Wins Shelley v. Kraemer, in which Supreme Court strikes down legality of racially restrictive covenants.
• 1950 – Wins Supreme Court victories in two graduate-school integration cases, Sweatt v. Painter and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents.
• 1951 – Visits South Korea and Japan to investigate charges of racism in U.S. armed forces. He reported that the general practice was one of "rigid segregation."
• 1954 – Wins Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, landmark case that demolishes legal basis for segregation in America.
• 1956 – Wins Browder v. Gayle, ending the practice of segregation on buses and ending the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
• 1957 – Founds and becomes the first president-director counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., a nonprofit law firm separate and independent of the NAACP
• 1961 – Defends civil rights demonstrators, winning Supreme Court victory in Garner v. Louisiana; nominated to Second Circuit Court of Appeals by President John F. Kennedy.
• 1961 – Appointed circuit judge, makes 112 rulings, none of them reversed on certiorari by Supreme Court (1961–1965).
• 1965 – Appointed United States Solicitor General by President Lyndon B. Johnson; wins 14 of the 19 cases he argues for the government (1965–1967).
• 1967 – Becomes first African American named to U.S. Supreme Court (1967–1991).
• 1991 – Retires from the Supreme Court.
• 1992 – Receives the Liberty Medal recognizing his long history of protecting individual rights under the Constitution.
• 1993 – Dies at age 84 in Bethesda, Maryland, near Washington, D.C.
• 1993 – Receives Presidential Medal of Freedom, posthumously, from President Bill Clinton.

For more, see Bradley C. S. Watson, "The Jurisprudence of William Joseph Brennan, Jr., and Thurgood Marshall" in Frost, Bryan-Paul and Jeffrey Sikkenga. eds. History of American Political Thought (Lexington: Lexington Books, 2003). ISBN 0739106236; ISBN 978-0739106235; ISBN 9780393928860.

Books authored

• Marshall, Thurgood; Tushnet, Mark V. (Editor); and Kennedy, Randall (Forward by). (2001). Thurgood Marshall: His Speeches, Writings, Arguments, Opinions and Reminiscences. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, Incorporated – Lawrence Hill Books. ISBN 9781556523861.. 

See also

List of Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States List of U.S. Supreme Court Justices by time in office List of United States Chief Justices by time in office

• United States Supreme Court cases during the Warren Court
• United States Supreme Court cases during the Burger Court
• United States Supreme Court cases during the Rehnquist Court

Further reading

• Abraham, Henry J. (1992). Justices and Presidents: A Political History of Appointments to the Supreme Court (3rd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-506557-3. 
• Bland, Randall W. "Private Pressure on Public Law: The Legal Career of Justice Thurgood Marshall 1934–1991". New York: University Press of America, 1993.
• Cushman, Clare (2001). The Supreme Court Justices: Illustrated Biographies, 1789–1995 (2nd ed.). (Supreme Court Historical Society, Congressional Quarterly Books). ISBN 1568021267. 
• Frank, John P. (1995). Friedman, Leon; Israel, Fred L.. eds. The Justices of the United States Supreme Court: Their Lives and Major Opinions. Chelsea House Publishers. ISBN 0791013774; ISBN 978-0791013779. 
• Hall, Kermit L., ed. (1992). The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195058356; ISBN 9780195058352. 
• Hodges, Ruth A., Reference Librarian. Justice Thurgood Marshall: A Selected Bibliography, (Moorland-Spingarn Research Center Washington, DC, February 1993).
• James Jr, Rawn (2010). Root and Branch: Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall, and the Struggle to End Segregation. Bloomsbury Press. http://www.bloomsburypress.com/books/catalog/root_and_branch_hc_067. 
• Kallen, Stuart A., ed. (1993). Thurgood Marshall: A dream of justice for all. Abdo and Daughters. ISBN 1562392581. 
• Marshall, Thurgood. "Mr. Justice Murphy and Civil Rights." 48 Michigan Law Review 745 (1950).
• Martin, Fenton S.; Goehlert, Robert U. (1990). The U.S. Supreme Court: A Bibliography. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Books. ISBN 0871875543. 
• Tushnet, Mark V. Making Civil Rights Law: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court, 1936–1961. London: Oxford University Press, 1994. 399pp. ISBN 9780195104684;
• Tushnet, Mark V. Making Constitutional Law: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court, 1961–1991. New York: Oxford University Press. 1997. ISBN 0195093143 pp., 256.
• Urofsky, Melvin I. (1994). The Supreme Court Justices: A Biographical Dictionary. New York: Garland Publishing. pp. 590. ISBN 0815311761; ISBN 978-0815311768. 
• Vile, John R., ed. (2003). Great American Judges: An Encyclopedia. 1. Santa Barbara: ABC–CLIO. ISBN 978-1576079898 .
• White, G. Edward (2007), The American Judicial Tradition: Profiles of Leading American Judges (3rd ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0195139624.
• Williams, Juan, Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary (New York: New York Times, 1998). Promotional site for book ISBN 0812932994; ISBN 978-0812932997.
• Woodward, Robert; Armstrong, Scott (1979). The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court. New York. ISBN 9780380521838; ISBN 0380521830. ISBN 9780671241100; ISBN 0671241109; ISBN 0743274024; ISBN 9780743274029.. 

External links

• Ariens, Michael, Thurgood Marshall.
• Booknotes interview with Hunter Clark and Michael Davis on Thurgood Marshall: Warrior at the Bar, Rebel on the Bench, January 3, 1993.
• Booknotes interview with Williams on Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary, October 11, 1998.
• Fox, John, Expanding Civil Rights, Biographies of the Robes, Thurgood Marshall. Public Broadcasting Service.
• Miscellaneous biographies at Answers.com.
• Oyez, official Supreme Court media, Thurgood Marshall.
• Supreme Court Historical Society Thurgood Marshall.
• Thurgood Marshall at Find a Grave
• REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT IN CEREMONY HONORING MEDAL OF FREEDOM RECIPIENTS – November 30, 1993
• Oral History Interview with Thurgood Marshall, from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library
• FBI file on Thurgood Marshall

Legal offices
Preceded by New seat	Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit 1962–1965	Succeeded by Wilfred Feinberg
Preceded by Archibald Cox	Solicitor General 1965–1967	Succeeded by Erwin N. Griswold
Preceded by Tom C. Clark	Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States October 2, 1967 – October 1, 1991	Succeeded by Clarence Thomas