On this day in 1991

JUNE 27, 1991

Thurgood Marshall meets with President Lyndon B. Johnson in the Oval Office of the White House on the day in 1967 that Johnson nominated Marshall to serve on the Supreme Court. Credit: Frank Wolfe, LBJ Museum & Library, White House Photo Office collection

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.”