Thurgood Marshall

Background

Marshall was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and attended Lincoln University and Howard University School of Law. At Howard, he was mentored by Charles Hamilton Houston. He opened a law practice in Baltimore but soon joined Houston at the NAACP in New York. In 1935, Marshall and Houston brought suit against the University of Maryland on behalf of Donald Gaines Murray in the case Murray v.

Pearson. Marshall later became special counsel of the NAACP and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. He won 29 of the 32 civil rights cases he argued before the Supreme Court, including Brown v. Board of Education. President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him to the Supreme Court in 1967.

Solicitor General

Marshall's nomination as Solicitor General was seen as a step toward the Supreme Court. President Lyndon B. Johnson pressured Southern senators not to block the confirmation, and a Senate subcommittee hearing lasted only fifteen minutes. The full Senate confirmed him in August 1965.

As Solicitor General, Marshall won fourteen of the nineteen cases he argued before the Supreme Court, later calling it the best job he ever had. He argued in Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections that poll taxes were unlawful, and in a companion case to Miranda v. Arizona he unsuccessfully argued that federal agents were not always required to inform arrestees of their rights.

He successfully defended the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in South Carolina v. Katzenbach and Katzenbach v. Morgan.