Thurgood Marshall

Thurgood Marshall was an influential American lawyer, civil rights activist, and the first African American to serve on the United States Supreme Court. Born on July 2, 1908, in Baltimore, Maryland, Marshall grew up during the era of Jim Crow laws and racial segregation. He attended Lincoln University and later Howard University School of Law, where he graduated first in his class in 1933. Marshall joined the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, where he became the chief counsel and argued numerous landmark civil rights cases before the Supreme Court. His most notable victory came in 1954 with Brown v. Board of Education, which declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. In 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Marshall to the Supreme Court, where he served until 1991, consistently advocating for civil rights, individual liberties, and equal justice under the law.