Thurgood+Marshall

=Thurgood Marshall=

1908-1993
//Thurgood Marshall was one of the greatest fighters for Civil Rights, being the first African-American to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States. He was the one who ended legal segregation on the United States.//

Thurgood Marshall, the grandson of a slave, was born in Baltimore, Maryland on July 2 1908. He had a number of roles in the fight for Civil Rights and desegregation in America. Marshall studied at Lincoln University in Chester County, Pennsylvania. After being rejected from University of Maryland Law School for being black, he obtained a law degree at Howard University Law School in 1933. The next year he joined the Baltimore branch of the NAACP. In 1938 Marshall became a cheif counsel for the NAACP. During this period, he was asked by the United Nations and United Kingdom to help draft the constitutions of the emerging African nations of Ghana and what is now Tanzania. In the years following he represented clients with civil rights cases all over the United States. He became known as the "little man's lawyer" because of his dedication to work and skillful court presentations. In the next 23 years he won 29 of the 32 major cases he undertook for the NAACP. A number of these cases set constitutional precedents in issues such as voting rights and the breaking down of segregated transportation and education. His most recognised and well known victory is the //Brown vs Board of Education// case in 1954, which overturned //Plessy// vs //Ferguson// (1896) and its ‘separate but equal’ ruling that allowed the segregation of institutions and public facilities. In 1962, despite the resistance of the Southern Senators, President John F. Kennedy appointed Thurgood Marshall to the U.S. Court of Appeals. Marshall 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. None of his 98 majority decisions were ever reversed by the Supreme Court. Three years later President Lyndon Johnson appointed Thurgood Marshall US solicitor general. In this position he won 14 of the 19 cases he argued before the Supreme Court on behalf of the government. In 1967 he was nominated to serve on the US Supreme Court. Marshall was the first African-American to hold such an office, and stayed in this position for 24 years until he retired in 1991. Throughout these years, Marshall "established a record for supporting the voiceless American" (Thurgood Marshall College, n.d) and received many awards and citations for his outstanding contributions to civil rights. He worked on behalf of the blacks but by that, he moulded the structure of the rights of the individual to build the foundations of protections for Americans.

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