Thurgood Marshall

Thurgood Marshall (July 2,1908 ? January 24,1993) was an American jurist and the first African American to serve on the United States Supreme Court.

Law career

Murray v. Maryland

Marshall received his law degree from Howard in 1933, and set up a private practice in Baltimore. The following year, he began working with the Baltimore NAACP. He won his first major civil rights case, Murray v. Maryland, 169 Md. 478 (1936). This involved the first attempt to chip away at Plessy v. Ferguson, a plan created by his co-counsel on the case Charles Hamilton Houston. Marshall represented Donald Gaines Murray, a black Amherst College graduate with excellent creditials who had been denied admission to the University of Maryland Law School because of its separate but equal policies. This policy required black students to accept one of three options: 1) attend Morgan College, 2) the Princess Anne Academy, or 3) 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

Related Topics:
NAACP - Murray v. Maryland - 1936 - Plessy v. Ferguson - Charles Hamilton Houston - Donald Gaines Murray - Morgan College - 1935

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such schools were entirely unequal 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 now must furnish equality of treatment now?. Because the state did not appeal the ruling in the federal courts, this state ruling under the U.S. Constitution was the first to overturn Plessy. While it was a moral precedent, it was not a legal one, and had no authority outside the state of Maryland.

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Marshall won his first Supreme Court case, Chambers v. Florida, 309 U.S. 227 (1940). That same year, at the age of 32, he was appointed Chief counsel for the NAACP. He argued many other 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 was unconstitutional because it could never be truly equal. In total, Marshall won twenty-nine out of the thirty-two cases he argued before the Supreme Court.

Related Topics:
Chambers v. Florida - 1940 - Smith v. Allwright - 1944 - Shelley v. Kraemer - 1948 - Sweatt v. Painter - 1950 - McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents - Brown v. Board of Education - Topeka - 1954 - Separate but equal

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President Kennedy appointed Marshall to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 1961. A group of Democratic Party Senators led by Mississippi's James Eastland and West Virginia's Robert Byrd 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 Johnson appointed him Solicitor General.

Related Topics:
Kennedy - United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit - 1961 - Democratic Party - James Eastland - Robert Byrd - Recess appointment - 1965 - Lyndon Johnson - Solicitor General

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