The National Archives
50 years ago, Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993) became the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States when he was confirmed by the Senate on August 30, 1967. Marshall was one of the most prominent legal minds of the Civil Rights era, winning 29 of the 32 cases he argued before the Supreme Court. In 1952, he argued the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which overturned segregation and the doctrine of “separate but equal” that had ben in place in the South since Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). Marshall served on the Court for 24 years.
Learn more about Brown v. Board of Education in our film An Independent Judiciary.
