Thurgood Marshall was born on July 2, 1908, in Baltimore, Maryland. His mother was a teacher and his father a waiter and steward at a country club. Marshall graduated from Lincoln University and received his law degree from Howard University in 1933. While at Howard, he was influenced by a group of legal scholars who developed procedures for civil rights litigation (legal proceedings).

Marshall practiced law in Baltimore, Maryland, until 1938 and also served as counsel for the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1935, he successfully attacked segregation and discrimination in education, actions that helped lead to the desegregation of the University of Maryland Law School (where he had been denied admission because of race). Marshall became director of the NAACP's Legal Defense and Education Fund in 1939.

In 1938, Marshall was admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S...