Portrait of Thurgood Marshall

Birthday profile

Thurgood Marshall

Thurgood Marshall, American lawyer and civil rights activist, 32nd Solicitor General of the United States, and former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (died 1993)

Born
July 2, 1908
Died
January 24, 1993
Zodiac sign
Cancer
Birth year
1908

About Thurgood Marshall

Thoroughgood "Thurgood" Marshall was an American civil rights lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1967 until 1991. He was the Supreme Court's first African-American justice. Before his judicial service, he was an attorney who fought for civil rights, leading the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Marshall was a prominent figure in the movement to end racial segregation in American public schools. He won 29 of the 32 civil rights cases he argued before the Supreme Court, culminating in the Court's landmark 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which rejected the separate but equal doctrine and held segregation in public education to be unconstitutional. President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Marshall to the Supreme Court in 1967. A staunch liberal, he frequently dissented as the Court became increasingly conservative. Canada; after Houston returned to Washington, Marshall took his place as special counsel of the NAACP, and he became director-counsel of the newly formed NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

Thurgood Marshall timeline

  1. He won 29 of the 32 civil rights cases he argued before the Supreme Court, culminating in the Court's landmark 1954 decision in Brown v.
  2. President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Marshall to the Supreme Court in 1967.

The world when Thurgood Marshall was born

Thurgood Marshall was born in 1908. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1908

  • Best-selling book"Mr. Crewe's Career" – Winston Churchill

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentChicago Cubs win World Series
  • Top headlineFord Model T goes on sale — $850
  • Technology milestoneFord Model T — affordable automobile for the masses
  • Defining fadAutomobile craze
  • World population~1.68B

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderTheodore Roosevelt
  • U.S. population87.4M

1908 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Thurgood Marshall's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19082026
Population87.4M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Library of Congress, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.