Biography of Thurgood Marshall, Supreme Court's First African-American

Thank you, my friend SGT (Join to see) for reminding us that on January 24, 1993 the first African American Supreme Court Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall died at the age of 84.
Unfortunately this civil rights ardent supporter sided with the majority in Roe v Wade and overturned each of the USA states laws limited induced abortion in 1971.
He was the most left wing member of the court.

This video is biased in favor left wing perspective.
Thurgood Marshall: The Definitive Biography of the Great Lawyer and Supreme Court Justice (1999)
"Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, serving from October 1967 until October 1991. Marshall was the Court's 96th justice and its first African-American justice.
Before becoming a judge, Marshall was a lawyer who was best known for his high success rate in arguing before the Supreme Court and for the victory in Brown v. Board of Education, a decision that desegregated public schools. He served on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit after being appointed by President John F. Kennedy and then served as the Solicitor General after being appointed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965. President Johnson nominated him to the United States Supreme Court in 1967.
Although best remembered for jurisprudence in the fields of civil rights and criminal procedure, Marshall made significant contributions to other areas of the law as well. In Teamsters v. Terry, he held that the Seventh Amendment entitled the plaintiff to a jury trial in a suit against a labor union for breach of duty of fair representation. In TSC Industries, Inc. v. Northway, Inc., he articulated a formulation for the standard of materiality in United States securities law that is still applied and used today. In Cottage Savings Association v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, he weighed in on the income tax consequences of the Savings and Loan crisis, permitting a savings and loan association to deduct a loss from an exchange of mortgage participation interests. In Personnel Administrator MA v. Feeney, Marshall wrote a dissent saying that a law that gave hiring preference to veterans over non-veterans was unconstitutional because of its inequitable impact on women.
Among his many law clerks were attorneys who went on to become judges themselves, such as Judge Douglas Ginsburg of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals; Judge Ralph Winter of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit; Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan; as well as notable law professors Susan Low Bloch, Elizabeth Garrett (President of Cornell University), Paul Gewirtz, Dan Kahan, Randall L. Kennedy, Eben Moglen, Rick Pildes, Louis Michael Seidman,[25] Cass Sunstein, and Mark Tushnet (editor of Thurgood Marshall: His Speeches, Writings, Arguments, Opinions and Reminiscences); and law school deans Paul Mahoney of University of Virginia School of Law, Martha Minow of Harvard Law School, and Richard Revesz of New York University School of Law.
Marshall retired from the Supreme Court in 1991 due to declining health. In his retirement press conference on June 28, 1991, he expressed his view that race should not be a factor in choosing his successor, and he denied circulating claims that he was retiring because of frustration or anger over the conservative direction in which the Court was heading."[26] He was reportedly unhappy that it would fall to President George H. W. Bush to name his replacement.[27] Bush nominated Clarence Thomas to replace Marshall.
In 2006, Thurgood, a one-man play written by George Stevens, Jr., premiered at the Westport Country Playhouse, starring James Earl Jones and directed by Leonard Foglia.[38] Later it opened Broadway at the Booth Theatre on April 30, 2008, starring Laurence Fishburne.[39] On February 24, 2011, HBO screened a filmed version of the play which Fishburne performed at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The production was described by the Baltimore Sun as "one of the most frank, informed and searing discussions of race you will ever see on TV.".[40][41] On February 16, 2011, a screening of the film was hosted by the White House as part of its celebrations of Black History Month[42][43] A painting of Justice Thurgood by Chaz Guest currently hangs at the White House.[44][45] Also, a new film titled Marshall, is being made, with actor Chadwick Boseman as Thurgood Marshall, and directed by Reginald Hudlin."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmCrp66-5ms

Images:
1. Thurgood Marshall, Sr. Associate Justice of the United State Supreme Court (1967-1991)
2. Thurgood Marshall early life
3. Thurgood Marshall with his wife Teddy Marshall and their sons Thurgood Marshall, Jr. [born August 1956] and John W. Marshall [born in July 1958]
4. Thurgood Marshall as a young man


Background from [http://thurgoodmarshall.com/]
WHO WAS THURGOOD MARSHALL ?

Thurgood Marshall was America's leading radical. He led a civil rights revolution in the 20th century that forever changed the landscape of American society. But he is the least well known of the three leading black figures of this century. Martin Luther King Jr., with his preachings of love and non-violent resistance, and Malcolm X, the fiery street preacher who advocated a bloody overthrow of the system, are both more closely associate in the popular mind and myth with the civil rights struggle.
THURGOOD MARSHALL BIOGRAPHY


Born in Baltimore, Maryland on July 2, 1908, Thurgood Marshall was the grandson of a slave. His father, William Marshall, instilled in him from youth an appreciation for the United States Constitution and the rule of law. After completing high school in 1925, Thurgood followed his brother, William Aubrey Marshall, at the historically black Lincoln University in Chester County, Pennsylvania. His classmates at Lincoln included a distinguished group of future Black leaders such as the poet and author Langston Hughes, the future President of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, and musician Cab Calloway. Just before graduation, he married his first wife, Vivian "Buster" Burey. Their twenty-five year marriage ended with her death from cancer in 1955.
In 1930, he applied to the University of Maryland Law School, but was denied admission because he was Black. This was an event that was to haunt him and direct his future professional life. Thurgood sought admission and was accepted at the Howard University Law School that same year and came under the immediate influence of the dynamic new dean, Charles Hamilton Houston, who instilled in all of his students the desire to apply the tenets of the Constitution to all Americans. Paramount in Houston's outlook was the need to overturn the 1898 Supreme Court ruling, Plessy v. Ferguson which established the legal doctrine called, "separate but equal." Marshall's first major court case came in 1933 when he successfully sued the University of Maryland to admit a young African American Amherst University graduate named Donald Gaines Murray. Applauding Marshall's victory, author H.L. Mencken wrote that the decision of denial by the University of Maryland Law School was "brutal and absurd," and they should not object to the "presence among them of a self-respecting and ambitious young Afro-American well prepared for his studies by four years of hard work in a class A college."
Thurgood Marshall followed his Howard University mentor, Charles Hamilton Houston to New York and later became Chief Counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). During this period, Mr. Marshall was asked by the United Nations and the United Kingdom to help draft the constitutions of the emerging African nations of Ghana and what is now Tanzania. It was felt that the person who so successfully fought for the rights of America's oppressed minority would be the perfect person to ensure the rights of the White citizens in these two former European colonies. After amassing an impressive record of Supreme Court challenges to state-sponsored discrimination, including the landmark Brown v. Board decision in 1954, President John F. Kennedy appointed Thurgood Marshall to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. In this capacity, he wrote over 150 decisions including support for the rights of immigrants, limiting government intrusion in cases involving illegal search and seizure, double jeopardy, and right to privacy issues. Biographers Michael Davis and Hunter Clark note that, "none of his (Marshall's) 98 majority decisions was ever reversed by the Supreme Court." In 1965 President Lyndon Johnson appointed Judge Marshall to the office of U.S. Solicitor General. Before his subsequent nomination to the United States Supreme Court in 1967, Thurgood Marshall won 14 of the 19 cases he argued before the Supreme Court on behalf of the government. Indeed, Thurgood Marshall represented and won more cases before the United States Supreme Court than any other American.
Until his retirement from the highest court in the land, Justice Marshall established a record for supporting the voiceless American. Having honed his skills since the case against the University of Maryland, he developed a profound sensitivity to injustice by way of the crucible of racial discrimination in this country. As an Associate Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall leaves a legacy that expands that early sensitivity to include all of America's voiceless. Justice Marshall died on January 24, 1993.

Thurgood Marshall Early Years
Thurgood Marshall was born July 2, 1908, in Baltimore, Maryland; his father was a railroad porter and his mother a schoolteacher. After a brief period in New York City, the family moved to a racially diverse, largely middle class neighborhood in Baltimore called Druid Hill, although he attended segregated schools, graduating from the city's Colored High School in 1924 when he was only 16 years old. (He shortened his name to Thurgood in the second grade.)
Marshall's exposure to the law and the Constitution was unusually early. His father, William Marshall, never attended college, but he was fascinated by court trials and often took his son along with him. Marshall described himself as a "hell raiser" as a child, and while his naturally argumentative nature may have gotten him into a certain amount of trouble, it would prove a useful trait as a lawyer. One of Marshall's punishments for talking too much involved the U.S. Constitution.
"Instead of making us copy out stuff on the blackboard after school when we misbehaved," Marshall later recalled, "our teacher sent us down into the basement to learn parts of the Constitution. I made my way through every paragraph."
These early experiences reinforced many of the deepest convictions that shaped Marshall's professional career, including the importance of education for individual advancement, a deep respect for the legal profession, and the recognition of the bonds of family and community. "None of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps," Marshall said later.

Thurgood Marshall while he was a student at Lincoln University. The photo is Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity pledges (Marshall is 2nd from right in middle row).
Thurgood Marshall graduated cum laude with a bachelor's degree from Lincoln University in 1930. Lincoln University in rural Pennsylvania, is one of the nation's oldest Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). The school was chartered in 1854 as the Ashmun Institute and described by one of its early presidents as "the first institution found anywhere in the world to provide a higher education in the arts and sciences for male youth of African descent." It was renamed after President Abraham Lincoln in 1866. Among Lincoln's distinguished graduates were Marshall's classmate Langston Hughes; musician Cab Calloway; Kwame Nkrumah, first leader of an independent Ghana; and Nnamdi Azikiwe, first president of Nigeria.
At Lincoln, Marshall's interest in civil rights and the law deepened and he became a star member of the school's debating team, which competed against teams from such powerhouse institutions as Harvard University and Britain's Cambridge University. Marshall also met and married Vivian Burey in 1929, then a student at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
Photo Above:

Thurgood Marshall Howard University
In 1934, Thurgood Marshall graduated first in his class from Howard University Law School. Marshall wanted to attend the University of Maryland Law School but did not apply after it became clear that he would not be admitted into the segregated institution. The rejection stung deeply, but he refused to be deterred from a legal education by enrolling at one of America's most distinguished HBCUs, Howard University Law School in Washington, D.C. He made the long daily commute from Baltimore to Howard because he couldn't afford housing. His mother pawned her wedding and engagement rings to help pay the tuition. Marshall nevertheless excelled at Howard, graduating first in his class in 1933.
At Howard, Marshall made the most important professional friendship and alliance of his career with Professor Charles Hamilton Houston, who served as an important intellectual father to the 20th-century civil rights movement in the United States.
Houston, a Harvard Law School graduate, later served as chief legal counsel to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a position in which he would later be succeeded by Marshall himself. Houston was the first African American lawyer to win a case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Marshall credited Houston, who died in 1950, with devising the basic legal strategy that ultimately succeeded in legal segregation in the United States, specifically the "separate but equal" provisions of the Supreme Court's 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision.
"Charlie Houston insisted that we be social engineers rather than lawyers," Marshall said in a 1992 interview published by the American Bar Association. Referring to Brown v. Board of Education, Marshall said, "The school case was really Charlie's victory. He just never got a chance to see it."
A Career and a Cause
After earning his law degree, Marshall opened a law office in Baltimore in the depths of the Great Depression but quickly found himself in debt by handling civil rights cases for poor clients. In 1934 he went to work for the NAACP. A year later, with Houston as his adviser, Marshall won his first major racial discrimination case, Murray v. Pearson, which ended segregation of the University of Maryland's Law School. The victory over the school that had previously denied him admittance was especially sweet for Marshall, but the decision didn't strike at the heart of segregation since it was won on the grounds that the state of Maryland could not provide a credible "separate but equal" institution for providing African Americans with a legal education.
In 1936 Marshall became a staff NAACP lawyer based in New York; two years later, he succeeded Houston as the organization's chief counsel, although the two continued to work closely together. Marshall founded the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund in 1940. (The Fund became a separate organization in 1957.)
"Under Marshall, the NAACP's legal staff became the model for public interest law firms," wrote one of his biographers, Mark Tushnet. "Marshall was thus one of the first public interest lawyers. His commitment to racial justice led him and his staff to develop ways of thinking about constitutional litigation that have been enormously influential far beyond the areas of segregation and discrimination."
The Long Campaign
Together, Marshall and Houston mapped a long-term strategy to challenge and eradicate segregation in the United States that focused chiefly but not exclusively on education. At the time, the NAACP was devoting much of its resources to equalizing spending and resources for black schools operating in a racially segregated system.
Marshall convinced the NAACP to abandon that approach and said he would accept only cases that challenged segregation itself. The policy shift was controversial within the organization at the time, and several black lawyers who worked with the NAACP in the South resigned, increasing the burden on Marshall and his staff.
For two decades, Marshall traveled constantly, up to 50,000 miles a year, supervising more than 400 cases at a time and often facing the threat of harassment and even physical attack. "I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown for a long time, but never quite made the grade," he commented.
Marshall's record of success in striking down discriminatory and segregationist laws was extraordinary, winning 29 of 32 cases he argued. Among the most significant:
Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada (1938)
argued before the court by Charles Houston, extended the Maryland Murray v. Pearson decision to the entire nation, maintaining that a state with a single law school could not discriminate on the basis of race.
Chambers v. Florida (1940)
reversed the conviction of four black men accused of murder on grounds that excessive police pressure and coercion rendered their confessions inadmissible.
Smith v. Allwright (1944)
prohibited "whites only" primary elections that selected candidates for the general election. Marshall considered this case one of his most important victories, according to biographer Juan Williams.
Morgan v. Virginia (1946)
barred segregation in interstate bus transportation. Marshall also prevailed on the court to desegregate bus terminals who served interstate passengers. The Morgan decision served as the legal basis for the celebrated "Freedom Rides" of the early 1960s.
Patton v. Mississippi (1947)
maintained that juries from which African Americans had been systematically excluded could not convict black defendants.
Shelly v. Kraemer (1948)
declared that racially restrictive covenants preventing the sale of property to African Americans or other minorities could not be enforced by the state and were therefore null and void.
Sweatt v. Painter (1950)
held that the University of Texas School of Law could not deny admittance to an African American student since the separate law school for blacks did not provide anything approaching "substantive equality."
McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents (1950)
held that institutions of higher learning could not discriminate solely on the basis of race to meet the state's segregation requirements. The case involved an African American graduate student at the University of Oklahoma who was separated from the other students in the classroom and elsewhere on campus.
Along with his unwavering commitment to racial equality, legal scholarship, and intense preparation, Marshall commanded the courtroom with an orator's eloquence and a storyteller's charm. His later Supreme Court colleague William Brennan wrote of Marshall's stories, "They are brought to life by all the tricks of the storyteller's art: the fluid voice, the mobile eyebrows, the sidelong glance, the pregnant pause and the wry smile."
But they serve a deeper purpose, Brennan continued. "They are his way of preserving the past while purging it of its bleakest moments. They are also a form of education for the rest of us. Surely, Justice Marshall recognized that the stories made us – his colleagues – confront walks of life we had never know."

Thurgood Marshall, Sr. Associate Justice of the United State Supreme Court (1967-1991)
Thurgood Marshall, Sr. was sworn into office as the first African-American associate justice of the United States Supreme Court on October 2, 1967. His appointment by President Lyndon B. Johnson was simultaneously and ostensibly both a historic and a defining moment for America.
Justice Marshall’s appointment came at a pivotal time in American history, following his two-year appointment by President John F. Kennedy as United States Solicitor General (1965-1967). The nation was also grappling with several national issues that had bitterly divided Americans such as civil rights, the Vietnam War, desegregation of public schools, integration, race relations, abortion and the growing competitiveness between conservative views and liberal views and interestingly, many of those issues would come before the High Court during Justice Marshall’s 24-year term of service.
Yet, the state of the nation in 1967 was ideal for the new associate justice, a man who had spent 34 years of his life fighting for the civil rights of black Americans and the poor primarily but whose legal victories ultimately advanced the rights of all Americans. Prior to his appointment as an associate justice, Justice Marshall had won a stunning 29 of the 32 cases he argued before the Supreme Court, distinguishing himself as an advocate of the Court.
Justice Marshall’s 24 years on the Supreme Court continued his tireless fight for civil rights and his unyielding vision of the Constitution fulfilling its promise of equality for all Americans. His decisions were sometimes met with the intense opposition of his peers on many issues of national prominence such as the death penalty, abortion, desegregation and laws affecting the rights of the poor. However, he never compromised the values, beliefs and convictions that had guided his success as a lawyer who was often credited as being a leading architect of the civil rights movement.
The First Years
During his first years on the High Court, Justice Marshall signed very few dissents as he generally voted with the liberal majority of justices who were on the Court at that time. Some the more notable cases that the justices heard included:
Mempa v. Rhay in 1967, in which Justice Marshall wrote his first opinion in a unanimous decision that granted defendants the right to an attorney during every stage of the criminal process. He particularly expressed his belief this right was important to the poor.
Stanley v. Georgia in 1969, which held that the private possession of pornography could not be subject to prosecution.
Benton v. Maryland in 1969, which gave defendants protection against double jeopardy in state courts.
Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg in 1970, in which Justice Marshall persuaded his colleagues to unanimously confirm the use of busing to integrate public schools, an issue that was close to his heart in light of his landmark case Brown v. Board of Education.
The 1970s: A Time of Change
1970 ushered in a new era of conservatism as the Court became skewed with more conservative justices. By 1972, Justice Marshall was the only remaining appointee of President Johnson and the 1970s marked the beginning of his legal battles against conservatives that followed him throughout his remaining years on the Court. Two landmark cases in which his personal convictions led him to fight vigorously for what he believed was right involved abortion and the death penalty:
Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton in 1971 were landmark cases revolving around Texas and Georgia statutes restricting abortions. The justices were divided on the issue as well and Justice Marshall was openly aggressive in trying to the shape the Court’s opinion. In the end, he prevailed and the controversial ruling allowed abortion until such time that the fetus had viability outside the mother’s body.
Furman v. Georgia in 1972 prompted Justice Marshall to become the leader of the justices who were opposed to the death penalty. They won a difficult 5-4 vote outlawing capital punishment and marking the beginning of the justice’s long fight on the Court against the death penalty, which he vehemently opposed. He argued that the death penalty was applied inconsistently to different defendants and often was only applied to minorities and the indigent.
Over the years, as more conservative justices were appointed to the High Court, justices such as Justice Marshall and his ally Justice William Brennan, slowly became the minority. This sparked the beginning of Justice Marshall’s foray into writing a number of dissents, a practice that he would continue until his retirement in 1991 and also resulted in others in the judicial system to dub him “The Great Dissenter.” Two of his early and best known dissenting opinions occurred in two cases that shared similarities with Brown v. Board of Education.
In the 1973 case San Antonio School District v. Rodriguez, the majority cast a 5-4 vote that the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection was not violated by the property tax system used by Texas and most other states to finance public education. In a dissenting opinion, Justice Marshall argued that the right to an education should be regarded as a fundamental constitutional right and when state policies have the effect of discriminating on the basis of wealth, the policies should be subject to judicial scrutiny.
In 1974, black parents sued after the Detroit courts would not approve their request that the black urban school district and the white suburban school districts be merged to promote integration. After the parents won in the lower courts and appeals court, the Supreme Court reversed the rulings. Justice Marshall wrote an extremely strong dissenting opinion citing Brown v. Board of Education.
Justice Marshall’s work during the mid 1970s centered on one issue that he viewed as having among the greatest implications for society: the death penalty. When the High Court heard another death penalty case, there was a 7-2 vote to reinstate capital punishment in 1976, bitterly disappointing him.
Two days after reading his dissent to the majority opinion on the death penalty, Justice Marshall suffered his first heart attack while at home in his Fairfax County, Virginia. Over the next three days, he suffered two more heart attacks while hospitalized, marking the beginning his 15-year struggle with maintaining the rigors of serving on the conservative majority Supreme Court amid his deteriorating health.
Over the next five years, Justice Marshall faced tremendous pressure as new cases that went to the heart of his lifelong efforts on civil rights erupted and came before the Court, including a new cases on abortion, affirmative action and contracts for minority businesses.
Justice Marshall wrote a particularly impassioned dissent following the Court’s decision in the critical 1997 Bakke case. The case involved a young white man, Allan Bakke, who sued the University of California at Davis. Bakke asserted that the university had violated his Fourteenth Amendment rights when 16 minority students with lower grades than he had been admitted to the medical school, while he had been denied. The case was long and particularly divisive, ending a 5-4 majority voting against the university, which was a great disappointment to Justice Marshall.
1980-1991: Forging Ahead
Justice Marshall, though battling failing health and battling conservatives on the Court, presented powerfully persuasive arguments on the first major race relations case of the 1980s, which involved the constitutionality of a federal government plan to set aside 10 percent of its contracts for minority businesses. He cited the history of government-approved racial discrimination and the need for the government to remedy it. The Court voted 6-3 in support of Justice Marshall’s arguments, giving him a needed victory.
Throughout the 1980s, Justice Marshall continued to argue strategically and vigorously in cases that asserted a more expansive focus on civil rights in areas such as the homeless, the indigent and prisoners with mental problems. He saw some major victories such as two cases involving the death penalty for mentally ill inmates being overturned. In those cases in which his arguments did not prevail, Justice Marshall continued his track record of strongly worded dissents.
He wrote dissents in every death penalty case and every case in which black defendants charged that prosecutors used race as a basis for not allowing black jurors. A 1986 case gave Justice Marshall a tremendously satisfying victory when in a 7-2 ruling, the justices held that black jurors could not be excluded simply because the defendant was also black.
By 1990, amid failing health and as the sole justice appointed by a Democratic president, Justice Marshall continued writing strongly-worded dissents in response to the Court’s notably regressive stand on civil rights cases.
In June 1991, he officially announced its retirement but continued to serve the law until his health prevented him from leaving his home.
He died of heart failure at Bethesda Medical Center at age 84 on Sunday, January 24, 1993.
Thurgood Marshall had given his life to the crusade for civil rights and justice for all, leaving an indelible imprint on history and on the lives of future generations of Americans.

Thurgood Marshall's Family
Marshall was born to Norma A. Marshall and William Canfield on July 2, 1908. His parents were mulatottes, which are people classified as being at least half white. Norma and William were raised as “Negroes” and each taught their children to be proud of their ancestry. Furthermore, Marshall’s parents were against segregation, and instilled education as a means of uplift for their children. This passion for anti-segregation and education clearly transcended to Thurgood Marshall, Sr.
William, Thurgood’s father, worked full-time as a Pullman-car waiter and he had a deep passion for writing. He was later appointed a steward in Chesapeake Bay at the Gibson Island Club. Norma Marshall was an educator who taught elementary school. She enrolled in a teacher’s training program at Thurgood Marshall College Fund member institution Coppin State College. Norma became pregnant just prior to her graduation; however, she later completed her degree and William was in full support of her becoming a college graduate.
On December 17, 1955, Marshall married Cecila “Cissy” Suyat Marshall. In 1956, Thurgood Marshall, Jr. was born, who was Marshall’s first child. Presently, Marshall Jr. is an attorney in Washington, D.C. He is employed as a partner with Bingham McCutchen and a principal with the Bingham Consulting Group. Marshall, Jr. formerly served as Assistant to the President and a Cabinet Secretary under William “Bill” Jefferson Clinton from 1997 to 2001. He earned baccalaureate and juris doctor degrees from the University of Virginia. He is serving or has served on various boards, specifically the Board of Governors of the United States Postal Service, Board of Trustees of the Ford Foundation, National Fish and Wildlife Association, Corrections Corporation of America, Third Way, National Women's Law Center, University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service, and Supreme Court Historical Society. He currently lives in Virginia with his wife Teddi Marshall and their two sons, Will and Patrick. The couple remained married until Marshall’s death in 1993.
Thurgood Marshall’s Wife and Sons
Eight months after his wedding, Thurgood Marshall, Jr. was born, who was Marshall’s first child. Presently, Marshall Jr. is an attorney in Washington, D.C. He is employed as a partner with Bingham McCutchen and a principal with the Bingham Consulting Group. Marshall, Jr. formerly served as Assistant to the President and a Cabinet Secretary under William “Bill” Jefferson Clinton from 1997 to 2001. He earned baccalaureate and juris doctor degrees from the University of Virginia. He is serving or has served on various boards, specifically the Board of Governors of the United States Postal Service, Board of Trustees of the Ford Foundation, National Fish and Wildlife Association, Corrections Corporation of America, Third Way, National Women's Law Center, University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service, and Supreme Court Historical Society. He currently lives in Virginia with his wife Teddi Marshall and their two sons, Will and Patrick.
A few years after the birth of Marshall, Jr., Cissy Marshall delivered a second baby boy. In July 1958, John W. Marshall was born. During the time of John’s birth, polls among African Americans revealed that Marshall, Sr. was tied with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for the title of “Most Important Black Leader” for his stance on civil rights. Currently, John W. Marshall serves as Secretary of Public Safety for the Commonwealth of Virginia under the leadership of Governor Timothy M. Kaine. Secretary Marshall was first appointed under Governor Mark Warner in 2002 and re-appointed in January 2006. In his role, he has “responsibility for the oversight of 14 agencies and over 22,000 employees, including the Department of Corrections, Virginia National Guard and the Virginia State Police.” Educated at Georgetown University with an undergraduate degree in government, Secretary Marshall also obtained a post-baccalaureate certificate in administration of justice from Virginia Commonwealth University. Of note, Secretary Marshall is the first African American to serve as Director of the U.S. Marshall Service, America’s oldest federal law enforcement organization.

TIMELINE OF THURGOOD MARSHALL

1908 – Marshall named Thurgood on July 2 to Norma and William Marshall in Baltimore, Maryland; shortens name to Thurgood in second grade.
1929 – Marshall marries University of Pennsylvania student Vivian “Buster” Burrey.
1930 - Mr. Marshall graduates with honors from Lincoln U. (cum laude)
1933 - Receives law degree from Howard U. (magna cum laude); begins private practice in Baltimore Receives law degree from Howard U. (magna cum laude); begins private practice in Baltimore.
1934 –Marshall graduates from Howard University School of Law (magna cum laude); begins private practice in Baltimore.
1934 - Marshall works for National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Baltimore division.
1935 - With Charles Houston, wins first major civil rights case, Murray v. Pearson
1936 - Becomes assistant special counsel for NAACP in New York
1940 - Wins first of 29 Supreme Court victories (Chambers v. Florida)
1940 - Marshall is named first Director-Counsel of NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
1944 - Successfully argues Smith v. Allwright, overthrowing the South's "white primary"
1948 - Wins Shelley v. Kraemer, in which Supreme Court strikes down legality of racially restrictive covenants
1950 - Wins Supreme Court victories in two graduate-school integration cases, Sweatt v. Painter and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents
1951 - Visits South Korea and Japan to investigate charges of racism in U.S. armed forces. He reported that the general practice was one of "rigid segregation".
1954 - Wins Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, landmark case that demolishes legal basis for segregation in America
1955 - Marshall marries Cecelia “Cissy” Suyat Marshall.
1956 - Thurgood Marshall Jr. was born.
1959 - John W. Marshall was born.
1961 - Defends civil rights demonstrators, winning Supreme Circuit Court victory in Garner v. Louisiana; nominated to Second Court of Appeals by President J.F. Kennedy
1961 - Appointed circuit judge, makes 112 rulings, all of them later upheld by Supreme Court (1961-1965)
1965 - Appointed U.S. solicitor general by President Lyndon Johnson; wins 14 of the 19 cases he argues for the government (1965-1967)
1967 - Becomes first African American elevated to U.S. Supreme Court (1967-1991)
1971- Marshall and the other U.S. Supreme Court Justices guaranteed abortion rights in landmark Roe v. Wade case.
1978 – Marshall and the other U.S. Supreme Court Justices barred quota systems in college admissions in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke case.
1987 - Marshall gifts his name to establish the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund to benefit Public Historically Black Colleges and Universities
1991 – Marshall retires as Associate Justice of U.S. Supreme Court.
1993 – Marshall succumbs to heart failure in Baltimore, Maryland at age 84 and leaves behind a lasting legacy of civil rights."

FYI LTC Orlando Illi CPT Jack Durish CMSgt (Join to see) MSG Andrew White Sgt Albert Castro COL Mikel J. Burroughs Lt Col Charlie Brown LTC Greg Henning LTC Jeff Shearer Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. Maj William W. "Bill" Price SSG William Jones SP5 Mark Kuzinski PO1 H Gene Lawrence PO3 Bob McCord CPL Dave Hoover SPC Margaret Higgins Maj Robert Thornton Cynthia Croft

A pioneer in his time, for certain.
A little bit of history regarding the film made a couple of years ago involves the use of my friend Bob Mankes' 1935 Plymouth sedan as the car used to carry Chadwick Boseman who played Marshall in the traveling scenes. The actor selected to play the chauffeur did not know how to drive a manual transmission and Bob was unwilling to let him learn on his high-end restored Plymouth.
Having no time to locate someone who could properly play that role, they turned to Bob and said: "You're going to be the chauffeur but only in the driving scenes - you have no lines."
They proceeded to put an oversized hat on his head that came below the top of his ears.
Bob protested that they could at least give him a hat that fit to which they replied: "We don't want it to fit. We want it to hide your face because we don't want the viewers to know you are white. So you just crouch down and drive the car."
And that is how Bob became a movie extra.
Thanks for posting this tonight, David - have a great evening!

Thanks for sharing, a great man for sure.