On June 13, 1967, Thurgood Marshall was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Lyndon B. Johnson, becoming the first Black justice in American history.
A graduate of Howard University School of Law, Marshall joined the NAACP in the 1930s and quickly rose to national prominence as its lead attorney. He argued 32 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and won 29 of them — including the landmark 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which struck down school segregation and reshaped American civil rights law.
On the bench, Marshall served for 24 years as a steadfast defender of civil rights, affirmative action, abortion access, and the rights of criminal defendants. He was also a consistent opponent of the death penalty.
Marshall retired from the Court in 1991 and died two years later, on Jan. 24, 1993, at the age of 84.
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