On This Day In Black History...

In 1993 we mourned the loss of our most esteemed and only revered and highly respected Black Supreme Court Justice to date, the Honorable Thurgood Marshall. Justice Marshall was nominated by President Lyndon B. Johnson and confirmed in 1967. He retired from the bench in 1991. He is celebrated as a champion of civil rights and as a two time HBCU graduate, Lincoln University & Howard University Law School, respectively.

He was denied entrance to University of Maryland Law School based on race. Just a few years later in 1935, he successfully challenged this discriminatory practice and won admittance for Donald Gaines Murray, a young Black American who had also been denied admission.

Justice Marshall is most noted however for following in the footsteps of his Howard Law School mentor, Dean Charles Hamilton Houston, becoming Chief Counsel at the NAACP and winning Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), a landmark case that dismantled any legal basis for segregated schools in America.

Sadly the continuity of his hard work and honor of his legacy was thwarted by his succession on the Supreme Court by none other than clarence thomas.

~ Justice Thurgood Marshall July 2, 1908 to January 24, 1993 ~

"Mere access to the courthouse doors does not by itself assure a proper functioning of the adversary process" ~ Thurgood Marshall ~