When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown vs. Board of Education that school segregation must end, Thurgood Marshall stood with his colleagues on the court steps to pose for photos printed in newspapers around the country. "Thurgood wins" read a headline in the Baltimore Afro-American.
But long before May 17, 1954, Marshall had been using the courts, particularly in Maryland, to fight for equality. Sometimes he lost, but his victories made him famous. And they changed American life.
Born on July 2, 1908, in West Baltimore, Thoroughgood Marshall was named after his great-grandfather but shortened his name to Thurgood in grade school. His mother was an elementary schoolteacher, and his father was a Pullman car porter and a waiter at a whites-only Gibson Island country club.
Marshall attended the Colored High and Training School - for years the only high school for black students in the city. In the early 1920s it was renamed Frederick Douglass High School.
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