Another first for Thurgood Marshall

Jet, Jan 6, 2003

Another first for Thurgood Marshall: The first U.S. stamp for 2003 will honor Thurgood Marshall, the first Black person to serve as a U.S. Supreme Court Justice. The 37-cent stamp, which will be released Jan. 7 in Washington, D.C., features a photo of Marshall taken in 1967 when he was named to the nation's highest judicial post.

Born July 2, 1908, in Baltimore, Marshall graduated from Lincoln University in 1930 and from Howard University Law School in 1933, the first in his class. In 1934, he joined the NAACP's Baltimore branch as counsel and rose through the ranks, becoming director and counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund in 1940. His most famous civil rights victory came in 1954 when he argued the landmark Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, KS, which struck down segregation in public schools. After serving as an appellate judge and as U.S. solicitor general, Marshall was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he served 23 years until his 1991 retirement. He died Jan. 24, 1993, at the age of 85. Later that year, he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom--the nation's highest civilian honor. The Marshall stamp is the 26th in the Black Heritage series, which has hailed outstanding Black figures in American history.