The Student Became the Master
The Marshalls would also debate current events after dinner. Marshall later said that while his father never flat out told him to become a lawyer, he “turned me into one. He did it by teaching me to argue, by challenging my logic on every point, by making me prove every statement I made.” In the end, the student became the master.
Thurgood Marshall sitting with Eleanor Roosevelt, James McClendon, Walter White, and Roy Wilkins in 1947. Photo by Everett Collection / Shutterstock
Marshall went to Frederick Douglass High School in Baltimore, and graduated a year early, in 1925, with a B-grade average. He then went to Lincoln, a historically black university in Pennsylvania. It is commonly reported that Marshall intended to study medicine and become a dentist. But his application to the university states that his goal was indeed to become a lawyer.