Inspirational Quotes by Thurgood Marshall (American Jurist)

Thurgood Marshall (1908–93,) formerly Thoroughgood Marshall, was an American civil rights lawyer and solicitor general. He served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court 1967–91, and was the first African American member of the Supreme Court.

Born the great-grandson of a slave in Baltimore, Maryland, Marshall was educated at Lincoln and Howard universities. He joined the legal staff of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP.) He argued many critical civil rights cases, including the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954,) which proclaimed unconstitutional racial segregation in American public schools. He served as a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals 1961–65 and as Solicitor-General of the United States 1965–67, before becoming an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Marshall was a liberal judge; he was committed to the active protection of the poor through the Constitution. During his tenure, the court turned more conservative, and Marshall found himself ever more in dissent. By the time he retired in 1991, he was known as “the Great Dissenter”—one of the last remaining liberal members of a Supreme Court overshadowed by a conservative majority.

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