Young Thurgood: The Making of a Supreme Court Justice

This is an exhaustively researched and insightful examination of the formative events in the life of Thurgood Marshall. Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993) was the grandson of a slave who became US Solicitor General in 1965. Born in Baltimore, he was educated at the historically black Lincoln University in Pennsylvania where his classmates included the author Langston Hughes and future President of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, not to mention musician Cab Calloway. In 1930 he was denied admission to Maryland Law School because he was black. This was an event that was to both haunt him and direct his future professional life. Marshall’s first court case came in 1933 when he successfully sued the University of Maryland over the admission of another black graduate - his beginnings of a profound sensitivity to injustice and support for the voiceless American, whatever his or her colour.