Thurgood Marshall was an American lawyer and civil rights activist who served as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from October 1967 until October 1991. Marshall was the Court's first African-American justice. Prior to his judicial service, he successfully argued several cases before the Supreme Court, including Brown v. Board of Education.
Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U.S. 629 (1950), was a U.S. Supreme Court case that successfully challenged the "separate but equal" doctrine of racial segregation established by the 1896 case Plessy v. Ferguson. The case was influential in the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education four years later.
The University of Houston is a public research university in Houston, Texas, and the flagship institution of the University of Houston System. Founded in 1927, U of H is the third-largest university in Texas with over 46,000 students. Its campus spans 667 acres (2.70 km2) in southeast Houston, and was known as University of Houston–University Park from 1983 to 1991. The university is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity".
Kathryn Jean Whitmire is an American politician, businesswoman, and accountant best known as the first woman to serve as Mayor of Houston, serving for five consecutive two-year terms from 1982 to 1991. From 1977 to 1981, she was the city controller, a position which made her the first female elected to any office in the city. Whitmire drew national attention when she defeated former Harris County Sheriff Jack Heard in her election as mayor. The election drew national focus because it symbolized a major political realignment in the fourth-largest city in the United States.
Alexander N. Green is an American lawyer and politician. Green has served in Congress as the Representative for Texas's 9th congressional district since 2005. The 9th district includes most of southwestern Houston, part of Fort Bend County and most of Missouri City. Green is a member of the Democratic Party.
Texas Southern University is a public historically black university (HBCU) in Houston, Texas. The university is one of the largest and most comprehensive HBCUs in the nation with over 10,000 students enrolled and over 100 academic programs. The university is a member school of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund and it is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. It is classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity".
Charles Hamilton Houston was a prominent African-American lawyer, Dean of Howard University Law School, and NAACP first special counsel, or Litigation Director. A graduate of Amherst College and Harvard Law School, Houston played a significant role in dismantling Jim Crow laws, especially attacking segregation in schools and racial housing covenants. He earned the title "The Man Who Killed Jim Crow".
The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. is a leading United States civil rights organization and law firm based in New York City.
Robert Lee Carter was an American lawyer, civil rights activist and a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Harry E. Johnson is a career lawyer, entrepreneur, public servant and partner at the Law Office of Glenn and Johnson in Houston, Texas. He served as City Attorney for Kendelton, Texas from 1996 to 1999, and taught at Texas Southern University in both the Thurgood Marshall School of Law and School of Public Affairs from 1994 to 1999. Johnson is a former National President of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, and is the President and CEO of the Washington, D.C. Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation, Inc.
Zephaniah Alexander Looby was a lawyer in Nashville, Tennessee who was active in the Civil Rights Movement. Born in the British West Indies, he immigrated to the United States at the age of 15, and earned degrees at Howard University, Columbia University Law School, and New York University.
The Thurgood Marshall School of Law (TMSL) is an ABA-accredited law school in Houston, Texas, that awards Juris Doctor and Master of Law degrees. It is part of Texas Southern University. Thurgood Marshall School of Law is a member-school of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund and Association of American Law Schools.
Thurgood Marshall Jr. is an American lawyer and son of the late Supreme Court of the United States Justice Thurgood Marshall.
George Lewis Ruffin was a barber, attorney, politician and judge. In 1869 he graduated from Harvard Law School, the first African American to do so. He was also the first African American elected to the Boston City Council. Ruffin was elected in 1870 to the Massachusetts Legislature. In 1883, he was appointed by the governor Benjamin Franklin Butler as a judge to the Municipal Court, Charlestown district in Boston, making him the first African American judge in the United States. He married 16 year-old Josephine St. Pierre in 1858. Florida Ruffin Ridley was one of their children.
David Alan Ezra is a Senior United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Hawaii. Since January 2013, Ezra has been designated by the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court to serve on the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas, San Antonio Division to help ease the heavy workload for the federal judges in Texas.
Kenneth Michael Hoyt is a Senior United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas.
Domingo García is an American lawyer and politician. He serves as the 51st President of LULAC. He previously served as a member of the Dallas City Council, Mayor Pro Tem of Dallas, and a member of the Texas House of Representatives.
Johnny Clayton Taylor Jr. is an American lawyer, author and public speaker who is the president & CEO of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). He was previously president & CEO of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund (TMCF), which represents the US's 47 publicly supported historically Black colleges and universities. In February 2018, President Donald Trump appointed Taylor Chair of the President's Advisory Board on Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Taylor was also on the board of Gallup, a research-based, global performance-management consulting company. From December 2016 until leaving the board in mid-2018, he was chair of the Cooper Union Governance Committee and as member of the Executive Committee. Along with Cantor Fitzgerald and BGC Partners Chief Information Officer and Cooper Union alumnus Eric Hirschhorn, Taylor co-chaired the school's search committee for a full-time president. Taylor was elected to the board of trustees of the University of Miami on May 5, 2017.
Carter Walker Wesley was an American lawyer, newspaperman and political activist.
Larry S. Gibson is a law professor, lawyer, political organizer, and historian. He currently serves as a professor at the Francis King Carey School of Law in the University of Maryland, Baltimore; where he has been on the faculty for 38 years. Gibson currently serves as council for the firm of Shapiro, Sher, Guinot, and Sandler. He was the principal advocate for the legislation that renamed Maryland's major airport, the Baltimore Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport and published Young Thurgood: The Making of a Supreme Court Justice in 2012.
