Thurgood Marshall: first African-American Supreme Court justice

Thurgood Marshall was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court who served from October 1967 until October 1991. Marshall was the Court’s 96th Justice and its first African American Justice who ended legal segregation in the United States. He won Supreme Court victories breaking the color line in housing, transportation and voting, all of which overturned the ‘Separate-but-Equal’ apartheid of American life in the first half of the century. He won the most important legal case of the century, Brown v. Board of Education, ending the legal separation of black and white children in public schools. The success of the Brown case sparked the 1960s civil rights movement and led to the increased number of black high school and college graduates. It also contributed to the incredible rise of the black middle class in both numbers and political power in the second half of the century.

Marshall, as the nation’s first African-American Supreme Court Justice, promoted affirmative action — preferences, set-asides and other race conscious policies — as the remedy for the damage remaining from the nation’s history of slavery and racial bias. He worked on behalf of Black Americans and built a structure of individual rights that became the cornerstone of protections for all Americans. He succeeded in creating new protections under law for women, children, prisoners, and the homeless.