Thurgood Marshall’s Desk

1940

Marshall’s legal strategies were successful in cases before Brown v. Board.

Thurgood Marshall created the Legal Defense Fund in 1940. For more than two decades, he led its legal strategies challenging the Court’s “separate but equal” precedents, winning multiple narrow cases before Brown v. the Board of Education. Like Lucinda Todd’s dining room table, Marshall’s desk was a place for collaboration and strategy in the fight to end segregation.