Thurgood Marshall Bio
Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an American lawyer who served, from October 1967 until October 1991, as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Marshall was the Court’s first African-American justice and it’s 96th justice.
Marshall successfully argued several cases before the Supreme Court, including Brown v. Board of Education prior to his judicial service.
After graduating from the Howard University School of Law in 1933, Marshall established a private legal practice in Baltimore. Later, he founded the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, where he served as executive director. Marshall argued several cases before the Supreme Court in that position, including Smith v. Allwright, Shelley v. Kraemer, and Brown v. Board of Education, which held that racial segregation in public education is a violation of the Equal Protection Clause.
Thurgood Marshall Family
Marshall was descended from enslaved peoples on both sides of his family when he was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on July 2, 1908. Before shortening his name to Thurgood, his original name was Thoroughgood. Marshall’s father, William Canfield Marshall, worked as a railroad porter, and his mother Norma Arica (Williams), as a teacher. His parents instilled in him an appreciation for the United States Constitution and the rule of law.
Marshall’s father used to take him and his brother to watch court cases; they would later debate what they had seen. The family also debated current events after dinner. Marshall said that although his father never told him to become a lawyer, he turned him into one. He said that his father did it by teaching him to argue, by challenging his logic on every point, by making him prove every statement he made.
Thurgood Marshall Jr
Thurgood Marshall is the father of renowned American lawyer, Thurgood Marshall Jr.. Marshall Jr. was born on August 12, 1956, and graduated from The Phillips Exeter Academy before attending Georgetown Day School in Washington, D.C. and the Dalton School in New York City. He proceeded to the University of Virginia where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1978. Marshall Jr. earned a Juris Doctor at the University of Virginia School of Law in 1981. He worked in the Clinton White House and is currently a partner at the international law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, LLP.
Thurgood Marshall Wife
Marshall got married twice. He married his first wife, Vivian “Buster” Burey, in 1929. Vivian died in February 1955 after which Marshall married Cecilia Suyat in December of the same year.
The couple 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. They remained married until Marshall died in 1993.
Thurgood Marshall Education
Marshall attended Frederick Douglass High School in Baltimore and was placed in the class with the best students. He graduated in 1925, a year early, with a B-grade average, and placed in the top third of the class. He went to Lincoln University, a historically black university in Pennsylvania where he studied alongside poet Langston Hughes and musician Cab Calloway.
In his early years at the university, Marshall did not take his studies seriously and was suspended two times for hazing and pranks against fellow students. After he got married to Vivien Buster Burey in 1929, he began to take his studies seriously. This transformation paid off as he graduated from Lincoln with honors (cum laude) Bachelor of Arts in Humanities, with a major in American literature and philosophy.
Marshall wanted to study at the University of Maryland School of Law which was his hometown law school but due to their segregation policy, he did not apply. As a result, he applied to study at the Howard School of Law where he worked harder than he had at Lincoln. While at Howard, Marshall’s views on discrimination were strongly influenced by the dean, Charles Hamilton Houston. He graduated top of his class in 1933 at Howard.
Thurgood Marshall Quotes
In recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings, we pay ourselves the highest tribute.
Ending racial discrimination in jury selection can be accomplished only by eliminating peremptory challenges entirely.
Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men’s minds.
I have a lifetime appointment and I intend to serve it. I expect to die at 110, shot by a jealous husband.
We got here because somebody – a parent, a teacher, an Ivy League crony or a few nuns – bent down and helped us pick up our boots.
A child born to a Black mother in a state like Mississippi… has exactly the same rights as a white baby born to the wealthiest person in the United States. It’s not true, but I challenge anyone to say it is not a goal worth working for.
Sometimes history takes things into its own hands.
Surely the fact that a uniformed police officer is wearing his hair below his collar will make him no less identifiable as a policeman.
If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a state has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his house, what books he may read or what films he may watch.
Today’s Constitution is a realistic document of freedom only because of several corrective amendments. Those amendments speak to a sense of decency and fairness that I and other Blacks cherish.
What is the quality of your intent?
Mere access to the courthouse doors does not by itself assure a proper functioning of the adversary process.
Thurgood Marshall Death
Marshall was born on July 2, 1908, in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. He died of heart failure on January 24, 1993, at 2:58 pm, at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. As at the time of his death, Marshall was aged 84 years. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery after he lay in repose in the Great Hall of the United States Supreme Court Building. Marshall was survived by his second wife and their two sons.