Thurgood Marshall (Windows Media) Thurgood Marshall, a Baltimore native, was a pioneer in the civil rights movement and the first African American to become a U.S. Supreme Court Justice. In this clip, learn about Marshall’s fight for equal rights for all Americans, his success in the Donald Gaines Murray case that desegregated the University of Maryland Law School, and his nomination to the Supreme Court by President Lyndon Johnson in 1967.