Thurgood Marshall was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on July 2, 1908. Marshall attended Frederick Douglass High School, in Baltimore, Maryland, and was placed in the class with the best students. He graduated a year early in 1925 with a B-grade average, and placed in the top third of the class. He attended Lincoln University, a historically black university,in Pennsylvania. It is commonly reported that he intended to study medicine and become a dentist., but according to his application to Lincoln University, Marshall said his goal was to become a lawyer. In his first year, Marshall opposed the integration of African-American professors at the university. Marshall was later described as "rough and ready, loud and wrong". In his second year, Marshall participated in a sit-in protest against segregation at a local movie theater. That year, he was initiated as a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, the first fraternity founded by and for blacks.[
In September 1929, Marshall married Vivien Buster Burey and began to take his studies seriously, graduating cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in American literature and philosophy in 1930. Marshall wanted to study in his hometown law school, the University of Maryland School of Law, but did not apply because of the school's policy of segregation. Marshall attended Howard University School of Law, where he worked harder than he had at Lincoln. His mother had to pawn her wedding and engagement rings to pay the tuition. His views on discrimination were strongly influenced by the dean, Charles Hamilton Houston. Marshall graduated from Howard Law in 1933 ranked first in his class with an LL.B. magna cum laude.
After graduating from law school, Marshall started a private law practice in Baltimore. He began his 25-year affiliation with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1934 by representing the organization in the law school discrimination suit Murray v. Pearson. In 1936, Marshall became part of the national staff of the NAACP.
At the age of 32, Marshall argued and won Chambers v. Florida, 309 U.S. 227 (1940), before the U.S. Supreme Court. That same year, he founded and became the executive director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. As the head of the Legal Defense Fund, he argued many other civil rights cases before the Supreme Court, most of them successfully,
President John F. Kennedy appointed Marshall to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 1961 to a new seat created on May 19, 1961.
Marshall remained on that court until 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him to be the United States Solicitor General, the first African American to hold the office. At the time, this made him the highestranking black government official in American history
On June 13, 1967, President Johnson nominated Marshall to the Supreme Court following the retirement of Justice Tom C. Clark. Marshall served on the Court for the next 24 years
Marshall died of heart failure at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, on January 24, 1993, at the age of 84.