Thurgood Marshall

His father waited tables in hotels, in clubs and on railroad cars. His mother taught in an elementary school. He was named Thoroughgood after his father's father and shortened it himself in the second grade. The family went to New York after he was born and returned to Baltimore when he was six. At Lincoln University in Pennsylvania he led the debating team and graduated with honors in 1930, with Langston Hughes among his classmates. He had married Vivian Burey the year before that. The University of Maryland School of Law did not take Black students, so he went to Howard, where Charles Hamilton Houston was training lawyers to be social engineers. He finished first in his class in June 1933.

In 1935 he and Houston sued the University of Maryland on behalf of Donald Gaines Murray, rejected for the reason Marshall had been. They won, and the state never appealed. The white primary fell in Smith v. Allwright, segregated interstate buses in Morgan v. Virginia, racially restrictive covenants in Shelley v. Kraemer. On the Second Circuit he wrote 98 majority opinions and the Supreme Court reversed none of them. As Solicitor General he won 14 of 19. The campaign and the Court are BriefHistory's subject. What is left is the part that will not fit on a plaque.

Vivian Burey Marshall died of cancer in 1955, 26 years into the marriage. He married Cecilia Suyat, a secretary at the NAACP, before that year was out, and they had two sons. In 1960 Tom Mboya asked him to help write a constitution for Kenya, and he went. What trailed him afterward was a rumor that he did no work — that he decided a case, handed it to his clerks to write, and spent the afternoon on soap operas. He took open offense at it. Mark Tushnet, who clerked for him, called the charge wrong and perhaps racist. In 1987, invited to celebrate the Constitution's bicentennial, Marshall said he did not find the framers' wisdom, foresight or sense of justice particularly profound, and that the government they devised was defective from the start.

George H. W. Bush, whom Marshall loathed, replaced him with Clarence Thomas in 1991. He died of heart failure at Bethesda Naval Medical Center on January 24, 1993, at 84. He lay in repose in the Great Hall of the Supreme Court while thousands filed through, more than 4,000 people came to the service at Washington National Cathedral, and Chief Justice Rehnquist said in his eulogy that no single person had done more to make the words carved above the Court's entrance true. He is buried at Arlington. Maryland put his name on the Baltimore airport in 2005 and on the law library of the university that had refused to let him enroll.

Thurgood Marshall's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Murray v. Pearson case
  Forced the University of Maryland to admit a Black law student. The state never appealed 1935
• Smith v. Allwright case
  Ended the all-white primary election 1944
• Morgan v. Virginia case
  Struck down segregated seating on interstate buses 1946
• Shelley v. Kraemer case
  Made racially restrictive property covenants unenforceable in court 1948
• Constitution of Kenya other
  He helped draft it after an invitation from Tom Mboya in 1960 1963
• Reflections on the Bicentennial of the United States Constitution speech
  He declined, in public, to celebrate the framers 1987

• September 4, 1929 aged 21 Marries Vivian Burey while a student at Lincoln University
• 1930 aged ~22 Graduates from Lincoln University with honors Langston Hughes was a classmate. A hazing incident had cost him a two-week suspension.
• June 1933 aged 24 Finishes first in his class at Howard University School of Law
• 1935 aged ~27 Wins Murray v. Pearson against the law school that had refused him Judge Eugene O'Dunne ordered Donald Gaines Murray admitted.
• February 11, 1955 aged 46 Vivian Burey Marshall dies of cancer He married Cecilia Suyat in December of the same year.
• October 23, 1961 aged 53 Seated on the Second Circuit by recess appointment Southern senators held up confirmation for eight months. The Senate voted 56 to 14 on September 11, 1962.
• August 11, 1965 aged 57 Appointed Solicitor General of the United States He won 14 of the 19 cases he argued in the office.
• 1987 aged ~79 Refuses to celebrate the Constitution's bicentennial He called the government the framers devised defective from the start.
• January 24, 1993 aged 84 Dies of heart failure at 84 He lay in repose in the Great Hall of the Supreme Court.

• Langston Hughes 1901–1967
  Harlem Renaissance poet and writer whose work celebrated Black life and challenged racial injustice. classmate at Lincoln
• W.E.B. Du Bois 1868–1963
  Sociologist, historian, and civil rights activist who was the first African American to earn a Harvard doctorate. founder of the organization he served
• Martin Luther King Jr. 1929–1968
  Baptist minister and civil rights leader whose nonviolent activism ended legal segregation in America. parallel campaign
• Sonia Sotomayor b. 1954
  Supreme Court Justice and former Yale Law professor whose memoir chronicles her rise from the Bronx. later justice
• Frederick Douglass 1818–1895
  Former slave who became a leading abolitionist, orator, and advocate for equal rights. earlier advocate of the same argument