Thurgood Marshall

1908 – 1993

Thurgood Marshall served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1967 to 1991, becoming the first African American to sit on the Court. As a civil rights attorney leading the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, he won 29 of the 32 cases he argued before the Supreme Court, most famously Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, which struck down racial segregation in public schools. Across his quarter-century on the bench he was a steadfast defender of civil rights, free speech, and the rights of the accused.

Last checked: May 10, 2026, 1:06 PM