Thurgood Marshall made immeasurable strides for the civil rights movement during his lifetime.
Working under his mentor and well-known civil rights icon Charles Hamilton Houston at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Marshall successfully argued Brown v. Board of Education which famously declared unconstitutional the “separate but equal” doctrine.
In 1965, Marshall became the first black person appointed to the post of U.S. Solicitor General. Two years later, he became the first black person appointed to the United States Supreme Court, where he served until 1991.