Thurgood Marshall

1. Thurgood Marshall

2. Table of Contents • Who was Thurgood Marshall? • Movie • Early Life • Education • Early Career • Career • “America’s outstanding civil rights lawyer” • Important cases that he argued • Out come of Brown v. Board of Education • Brown v. Board of Education combined these cases • First African American justice • Things to think about…

3. Who was Thurgood Marshall? • Thurgood Marshall was an American jurist and the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States. • Attorney Thurgood Marshall led the civil rights case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka to a successful hearing at the Supreme Court of the United States in 1954.

4. Click the movie

5. Early Life • Marshall was born in Baltimore, Maryland on July 2, 1908. • He was the great grandson of a slave. • His father instilled in him an appreciation for the Constitution of the United States and the rule of law. • He was punished for his school misbehavior by being forced to write copies of the Constitution, which he later said piqued his interest in the document.

6. Education Marshall attended Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, working a number of jobs to pay his tuition. He became more serious about his studies after being suspended briefly in his second year. After receiving his bachelor's degree, he enrolled in the law school at Howard University in Washington, D.C., in 1930 and graduated in 1933. While at Howard he was influenced by Charles Houston (1895–1950) and other legal scholars who developed and perfected methods for winning civil rights lawsuits.

7. Early Career Passing the Maryland bar exam (an exam that is given by the body that governs law and that must be passed before one is allowed to practice law) in 1933, Marshall practiced in Baltimore until 1938. He also served as counsel for the Baltimore branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

8. Career In 1935 he successfully attacked segregation(separation based on race) and discrimination (unequal treatment) in education when he participated in the desegregation of the University of Maryland Law School, to which he had been denied admission because of his race. Marshall became director of the NAACP's Legal Defense and Education Fund in 1939. A year earlier he had been admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the fourth, fifth, and eighth circuits, and the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.

9. “America’s outstanding civil rights lawyer” After winning twenty-nine of the thirty-two civil rights cases that he brought before the Supreme Court, Marshall earned the reputation of "America's outstanding civil rights lawyer." During the trials, he and his aides were often threatened with death in the lower courts of some southern states. Cases he brought before the Supreme Court Some of the important cases he argued became landmarks in the ending of segregation as well as constitutional precedents (examples to help justify similar decisions in the future) with their decisions.

10. Important cases that he argued

11. Outcome of Brown v. Board of Education Number of Justices

12. Brown v. Board of Education combined these cases

13. First African American justice In 1967 President Johnson nominated Marshall as associate justice to the U.S. Supreme Court. Marshall's nomination was strongly opposed by several southern senators on the Judiciary Committee, but in the end he was confirmed by a vote of sixty-nine to eleven. He took his seat on October 2, 1967, becoming the first African American justice to sit on the Supreme Court. During his time on the Supreme Court, he remained a strong believer in individual rights and never wavered in his devotion to end discrimination. Marshall vowed to serve until he was 110; however, he was finally forced by illness to give up his seat in 1991. He died in 1993 at the age of eighty-four.

14. Things to think about… • What is Marshall wearing in all the pictures and videos that you have seen? • What would Marshall talk about at a dinner party? • Think about what type of food Marshall ate. • Think about what music he would have listened to. Click Click

15. Food that Marshall may have eaten… • Yams • Rice • Okra • Grits • Macaroni and Cheese • Fried Chicken • Fish • Greens

16. Types of music Marshall would have listened to… • R&B • Little Richard, James Brown, and Ray Charles • Gospel Music • Mahalia Jackson, James Cleveland, and Andrae Crouch • Soul • Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, and Booker T.