Thurgood Marshall and the March of Dimes Thurgood Marshall
(1908-1993) will long be remembered as one of the key members of
the United States Supreme Court, serving as an associate justice
from 1967 to 1991. He was the first African-American justice of
the Supreme Court, appointed by President Lyndon Johnson after
an illustrious career as an attorney for the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In
1954, the year in which the March of Dimes polio vaccine field
trial was under way to test the effectiveness of the vaccine
developed by Dr. Jonas Salk, Thurgood Marshall argued as an
NAACP lawyer his most famous case before the Supreme Court. In
Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, the court issued a
landmark decision which effectively rendered racial
discrimination in public education illegal in the United States.
Brown v. Board of Education and the Salk polio vaccine field
trial both changed America for the better. The first ensured
that African-Americans could not be prevente