Law, rights & equal dignity

Thurgood Marshall Place

Honoring Thurgood Marshall

Thurgood Marshall (1908–1993) was born in Baltimore, Maryland. Denied admission to the University of Maryland School of Law because of his race, he graduated first in his class at Howard University. As chief counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund he won 29 of 32 cases before the Supreme Court — including Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which ended legal school segregation. In 1967 he became the first Black Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Thurgood reminds us that fairness and equal dignity are the law of this mall.

None of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps.