Thurgood Marshall, 1967-1991

THURGOOD MARSHALL was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on July 2, 1908. He was graduated in 1930 from Lincoln University and in 1933 from Howard University Law School in Washington, D.C. Marshall began a legal career as counsel to the Baltimore Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He joined the national legal staff in 1936 and in 1938 became Chief Legal Officer. In 1940, the NAACP created the Legal Defense and Education Fund, with Marshall as its Director and Counsel. For more than twenty years. Marshall coordinated the NAACP effort to end racial segregation. In 1954, he argued the case of Brown v. Board of Education before the Supreme Court of the United States. President John F. Kennedy appointed Marshall to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 1961. Four years later, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him Solicitor General of the United States. President Johnson nominated Marshall to the Supreme Court of the United States on June 13, 1967. The Senate confirmed the appointment on August 30, 1967. Marshall served twenty-three years on the Supreme Court, retiring on October 1, 1991. He died on January 24, 1993 at the age of eighty-four.