President Lyndon B. Johnson had nominated Marshall in June 1967 to replace Justice Tom C. Clark. Southern senators opposed him and a subcommittee delayed his nomination, but on August 30 the full Senate confirmed him by 69 votes to 11. As the NAACP's leading lawyer, Marshall had won 29 of the 32 civil rights cases he argued before the Supreme Court, including Brown v. Board of Education, which ended legal segregation in public schools.
Marshall was born in Baltimore in 1908 and studied law at Howard University, where his mentor, Charles Hamilton Houston, taught students to be "social engineers" who used the law to fight for civil rights. As chief counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund he travelled the segregated South for years, arguing cases in hostile courtrooms, and planned the long legal campaign against "separate but equal" that culminated in the Brown decision of May 17, 1954.
President John F. Kennedy appointed him to the federal appeals court in New York, and in 1965 Johnson made him Solicitor General, the government's chief advocate before the Supreme Court. His elevation to the Court itself two years later was the culmination of a career spent before its bench.
Marshall took the constitutional oath on October 2, 1967, and served for 24 years, becoming known for his defence of individual rights and his opposition to the death penalty. He retired in 1991 and died in 1993.
Key people: Thurgood Marshall, Lyndon B. Johnson