Book six in the Making of America series tells the story of Supreme Court justice and civil rights activist Thurgood Marshall Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993) was a US Supreme Court justice and important civil rights activist. The book traces his life from his childhood in Baltimore, where he faced racial segregation at school, to his years at Howard University School of Law (he was denied admittance to white law schools) and his legal work with the NAACP. Marshall argued 32 cases before the Supreme Court-more than anyone else in history-especially against those cases that attempted to justify Jim Crow segregation. He became the first African American to sit on the Supreme Court, serving from 1967-1991.