Thurgood Marshall

July 2, 1908 - Thurgood Marshall was born on this day in Baltimore, MD. In 1967 he was the first African-American to serve on the Supreme Court of The United States of America. He had the most distinguished legal career of any African-American as the NAACP's national counsel, director-counsel of the organization's Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and leader of some of the most important legal challenges for African-Americans' Constitutional rights, including Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. In addition to sitting as a circuit judge for the Second Circuit, Thurgood Marshall was named U.S. Solicitor General in 1965 and associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967, where he served for 24 years. In 1991 he retired from the Supreme Court. In 1993 he died at the age 84 in Bethesda, MD, near Washington, D.C. On October 1, 2005, Baltimore-Washington International Airport was renamed Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport in his honor.

Thurgood Marshall, we say your name, we say your name. We salute you!