Last updated on: 11/28/2007 | Author: ProCon.org

Thurgood Marshall, JD Biography

Title:
Former Associate Justice for the U.S. Supreme Court
Position:
Pro to the question "Should Felons Who Have Completed Their Sentence (Incarceration, Probation, and Parole) Be Allowed to Vote?"
Reasoning:

“[T]he denial of a right to vote to such persons [ex-offenders] is hindrance to the efforts of society to rehabilitate former felons and convert them into law-abiding and productive citizens.”

Dissent, Richardson v. Ramirez, 1974
Involvement and Affiliations:
  • BWI Airport was renamed Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, 2005
  • Thurgood Marshall postage stamp issued, 2003
  • Thurgood Marshall Memorial established, Maryland State House in Annapolis, 1996
  • Third College, part University of California, San Diego, was officially renamed as Thurgood Marshall College, 1993
  • Associate Justice, U.S. Supreme Court (appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson), 1967-1991
  • U.S. Solicitor General (appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson), 1965-1967
  • First African-American member of the US Supreme Court, 1967
  • Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (appointed by President John F. Kennedy), 1961-1965
  • Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, 1940-1961
  • Chief Counsel, NAACP, 1938-1940
  • Special Counsel, NAACP New York, 1936-1938
  • Initiated civil rights work in Maryland against lynching and for equal pay for teachers, 1933-1938
  • Attorney, NAACP Baltimore, 1934-1936
Education:
  • JD, magna cum laude, Howard University, 1933
  • BA, cum laude, Lincoln University, PA, 1930
  • Graduate, Frederick Douglass High School, Baltimore, MD, 1925
Other:
  • Marshall died of heart failure at National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, at 2 p.m. on January 24, 1993. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
  • He won 29 out of the 32 cases he argued before the U.S. Supreme Court (14 as a private lawyer and 18 as Solicitor General of the United States).
  • His most famous case as a lawyer was Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483, 1954