On this day in 1991

JUNE 27, 1991

Portrait of Thurgood Marshall Credit: Artist Betsy Graves Reyneau, which hangs in the National Gallery Portrait

Thurgood Marshall, the first Black justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, announced his retirement from the high court. President George H.W. Bush appointed Clarence Thomas to take Marshall’s place. 

Two years later, Marshall died and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery near the graves of previous justices. 

“I wish I could say that racism and prejudice were only distant memories. We must dissent from the indifference. We must dissent from the apathy. We must dissent from the fear, the hatred and the mistrust,” he said in an interview before his death. “We must dissent because America can do better, because America has no choice but to do better.”

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