(1908 – 1993) Civil-rights leader and Supreme Court justice. During his distinguished career directing the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund (1939–61), Marshall argued many landmark decisions in civil rights and the fight against segregation and other forms of discrimination, capped by the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision of 1954. President Kennedy appointed him to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in 1961; in 1965 Marshall became solicitor-general. Appointed to the Supreme Court by President Johnson in 1967 as the first African American justice, Marshall served until 1991. A liberal voice amidst a predominantly conservative court, his opposition to decisions of an increasingly conservative court with regard to the death penalty which he opposed, as well as his civil-rights interests led to his nickname “the great dissenter.”