Thurgood Marshall

February 17, 2009

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Profile America for the 17th day of Black History Month. Thurgood Marshall, the first African- American to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, was born in 1908 in Baltimore, where the international airport now bears his name. As an attorney, he argued 32 cases before the Supreme Court, winning 29 of them. His greatest victory came in the landmark 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision, which ended segregation in the school systems of 21 states. Marshall was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1967 and served for 24 years before retiring in 1991, building a record of strong support for individual rights. Today, there are more than a million lawyers in the U.S., nearly 5 percent of them African-American. This special edition of Profile America for Black History Month is a public service of the U.S. Census Bureau.

Sources: Statistical Abstract of the United States 2009, t. 596
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2009edition.html