Alpha Phi Alpha’s Thurgood Marshall Became the First Black U.S. Supreme Court Justice

Did you know that the first Black justice to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court was a brother of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.? His name was Thurgood Marshall, and the fraternity he joined as a college student stood with him through a lifetime of changing American law.

Thurgood Marshall was born on July 2, 1908, in Baltimore, Maryland. He earned his undergraduate degree in 1930 from Lincoln University, the historically Black college in Pennsylvania, where he was initiated into Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. When he set his sights on law school, the University of Maryland turned him away because he was Black, so he enrolled at Howard University School of Law, another historically Black institution, graduating first in his class in 1933 under the mentorship of Charles Hamilton Houston.

Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. was founded in 1906 at Cornell University as the first intercollegiate Greek-letter fraternity established for African Americans, guided by the aims of manly deeds, scholarship, and love for all mankind. Marshall remained a brother for decades. The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture preserves his Alpha Phi Alpha dues card, which documents his membership from 1929 to 1964.

Marshall joined the NAACP’s legal staff in 1936 and became the first director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund in 1940. According to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, he argued and won Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka in 1954, the case in which the Supreme Court declared racially segregated public schools unconstitutional. Over his career, he won 29 of the 32 cases he argued before the Supreme Court.

In 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson nominated Marshall to the Supreme Court, and the Senate confirmed him that August. As the U.S. Department of Justice notes, he became the first African American to serve on the nation’s highest court, a seat he held until his retirement in 1991. He died on January 24, 1993.

Marshall’s legacy is honored across the country. In 1987, the Thurgood Marshall College Fund was established in his name and has grown into the nation’s largest organization supporting publicly supported historically Black colleges and universities and the students who attend them. Texas Southern University named its law school the Thurgood Marshall School of Law in 1976, and the University of California, San Diego named one of its colleges after him. In 2005, Baltimore/Washington International Airport was renamed Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, and the federal judiciary building in Washington, D.C., carries his name.

From Lincoln University to Howard University to the Supreme Court bench, Alpha Phi Alpha’s Thurgood Marshall carried his brotherhood and his convictions into a life that changed the country.