With  his appointment on August 30, 1967, Justice Thurgood Marshall became the first African-American appointed to the United States Supreme Court. He was appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson.

   Thurgood Marshall was born in Baltimore, Maryland on July 2, 1908. He attended public schools in Baltimore.

   In 1930, Marshall graduated with honors from Lincoln University, where he had gone with the intention of becoming a dentist. He later decided to become a lawyer and in 1933, received his law degree, magna cum laude, from Howard University Law School in Washington, D.C.

   Upon graduation from law school, he entered the private practice of law in Baltimore. In 1934, he served, from 1940 until his organization's nationalbecame counsel for the Baltimore branch of the NAACP. In 1936, he joined the legal staff. Justice Marshall was appointed chief legal officer in 1938. He appointment to the federal bench in 1961, as Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

  Marshall's historic litigation with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund led to some of the most important civil rights decisions in American history, including Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U.S. 629 (1950) (holding that the seeking to attend the University of Texas Law School violated the U.S. Constitution); Brown v. State of Texas's provision of "separate but equal" facilities for an African-American law student Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) (holding that the provision of "separate but equal" facilities for African-American students in several Southern public schools violated the U.S. Constitution) and Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1 (1958) (rejecting the local school board's petition to postpone the immediate desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas).   

On September 23, 1961, President Kennedy nominated Thurgood Marshall for appointment to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He was given a recess appointment in October, 1961 and his nomination was confirmed by the Senate on September 11, 1962. As a circuit judge, Marshall made 112 rulings that were appealed, all of them were later upheld by the Supreme Court.   

    President Johnson nominated Thurgood Marshall for appointment as Solicitor General of the United States, the federal government's top trial lawyer, on July 13, 1965. He took the oath of office on August 24, 1965. 
 
    Two years later, Marshall was nominated by President Johnson as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States oath on September 1, 1967. President Johnson is quoted as saying of this appointment that it on June 13, 1967, confirmed by the U.S. Senate on August 30, 1967, and took the constitutional was "the right thing to do, the right time to do it, the right man and the right place." Thurgood Marshall took the judicial oath, and was seated on October 2, 1967, as successor to Justice Tom Clark, becoming the first African-American to become an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. By the time Marshall succeeded Justice Clark on the Supreme Court, he had argued 32 cases before the Court, winning 29 of them. 

    Marshall was the author of a number of majority opinions, including Amalgamated Food Employees Local 590 v. Logan Valley Plaza, 39 U.S. 308 (1968); Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557 (1969), and Ake v. Oklahoma, 470 U.S. 68 (1985). 

    Before his ascension to the Supreme Court, Justice Marshall served briefly in a number of court-martial cases involving Negro soldiers. In 1961 he served as a consultant at the Constitutional Conference on Kenya in London and as President Kennedy's personal representative to the independence ceremonies of Sierre Leone. Just prior to becoming the Treatment of Offenders which convened in Stockholm in August 1965. He was former President Truman's personal representative other governmental and public interest capacities through the 1950's and 1960's. In 1951, he visited Japan and Korea to investigate Solicitor General, he was Chief of the United States Delegation to the Third United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and to the laying of the cornerstone ceremony at the Center for the Advancement of Peace (Harry S. Truman Centre) in Jerusalem on July11, 1966. He attended, as special Ambassador and head of the United States Delegation, the funeral of the late Prime Minister Sangster of Jamaica on April 17, 1967.  
 
    After 24 years as an Associate Justice, Thurgood Marshall retired from the United States Supreme Court on June 27, 1991. Scheduled to conduct the swearing-in ceremony of Al Gore as Vice-President of the United States on January 20, 1992, illness prevented him from doing so. After more than 50 historic years fighting for equality under the law, Justice Thurgood Marshall died on January 24, 1993 at age 84.