Thurgood Marshall Case

I was born in Baltimore, Maryland on July 2, 1908, I was the grandson of a slave. I got in trouble a lot as a child and had to go to school where my mother taught. After completing high school in 1925, I followed my brother, William Aubrey Marshall, at the historically black Lincoln University in Chester County, Pennsylvania. My classmates at Lincoln included a group of future Black leaders such as the poet and author Langston Hughes, the future President of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, and musician Cab Calloway. Just before graduation, I married my first wife, Vivian "Buster" Burey. Our twenty-five year marriage ended with her death from cancer in 1955. In 1930, I applied to the University of Maryland Law School but was denied admission because I am black. After that, I was accepted to Howard University Law School.

Interests

My interests include anything that has to do with the NAACP and law. My favorite hobbies are poetry and music. As a punishment for being so bad in school I would have to read the constitution over and over again which is why I'm so interested in it now.

Quotes

"A child born to a Black mother in a state like Mississippi... has exactly the same rights as a white baby born to the wealthiest person in the United States. It's not true, but I challenge anyone to say it is not a goal worth working for."

"None of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. We got here because somebody - a parent, a teacher, an Ivy League crony or a few nuns - bent down and helped us pick up our boots."

"Sometimes history takes things into its own hands."