Thurgood Marshall was born in Baltimore. He graduated with honors from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania in 1930 and then attended Howard University Law School. After graduation in 1933, he started a private law practice, specializing in civil rights cases. He also began working for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Baltimore. Marshall spent much of his life fighting for the rights of African Americans. He won several notable cases, including Brown v. Board of Education, in which the Supreme Court declared the segregation of public schools to be unconstitutional. Marshall won 29 of 32 major cases for the NAACP. In 1961 he was nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals and was named solicitor general in 1965. In 1967 Marshall became the first African American member of the Supreme Court, where he served until 1991.
