Home / Full timeline / Retired Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall dies of a heart attack.
Retired Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall dies of a heart attack.
1993 (Jan 24)
Just days after illness forced him to cancel plans to swear in new vice-president Al Gore, retired Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall died of a heart attack in Bethesda, Maryland. An outspoken opponent of the conservative direction the country had taken since 1980, the eighty-four-year-old jurist had once vowed that he would not die until the Democrats were in the White House again. On the Wednesday after Marshall's death, nearly twenty thousand people filed past his coffin in the Great Hall of the Supreme Court. There they paid their respects to the man known as "Mr. Civil Rights" in recognition of his lifelong commitment to achieving justice for all, especially the poor and minorities. The next day, four thousand civil rights leaders, members of Congress, and others (including the president and the vice-president and their wives) gathered at Washington's National Cathedral for a memorial service. Marshall was buried on Friday at a private ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery.
References:
- • Hornsby, Alton. Chronology of African-American History: Significant Events and People from 1619 to the Present. Detroit: Gale Research, 1995.