He not only was the first African American Supreme Court justice from October 1967 to October 1991, he spent his time on the court being the voice of the voiceless.
Prior to that he was the US Solicitor General from 1965-1967, a justice on the US Second Court of Appeals from 1962-1965 and the chief counsel for the NAACP.
He successfully argued 29 cases before the Supreme Court, and many of them were landmark cases that demolished Jim Crow segregation in the United States such as the 1954 Brown v Board of Education of Topeka, Browder v. Gayle, Sweatt v. Painter and Shelley v. Kraemer just to name a few of them.
I'm taking a moment to remember Justice Marshall and compare and contrast him to the man that followed him on the SCOTUS. A man that has sold out his people, hasn't asked a question on the Court in several years, and votes in lock step with Scalia and corporations as opposed to being the voice of the voiceless.
Uncle Thomas is an embarrassment to everything that Marshall and legions of African American attorneys and jurists such as Marshall's mentor Charles Houston stood for.
Happy birthday, Justice Marshall. You are definitely missed as our legal champion. Hopefully President Obama will get the opportunity to put an African American on the SCOTUS more in line with your legacy rather than being the antithesis to it.
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