calm
Johnson nominated Marshall to the court following the retirement of Justice Tom C. Clark. In announcing the nomination, Johnson said that this was "the right thing to do, the right time to do it, the right man and the right place."
Marshall was confirmed as an Associate Justice of the court on August 30, 1967, by a Senate vote of 69–11. He was the 96th person to hold the position, and the first African American to do so. President Johnson later confided to his biographer, Doris Kearns Goodwin, that "a lot of black baby boys would be named Thurgood" in honor of this choice.
Marshall served on the Court for the next twenty-four years, compiling a liberal record that included strong support for Constitutional protection of individual rights, especially the rights of criminal suspects against the government. His most frequent ally on the Court (the pair rarely voted at odds) was Justice William Brennan, who consistently joined him in supporting abortion rights and opposing the death penalty. For example, in the court's decision of Furman v. Georgia, Marshall and Brennan, writing in dissent, concluded that the death penalty was, in all circumstances, unconstitutional. Thereafter, Brennan or Marshall dissented from every denial of certiorari in a capital case and from every decision upholding a sentence of death.
Marshall retired from the Supreme Court in 1991. He was reportedly unhappy that it would fall to President George H. W. Bush to name his replacement. Bush nominated Clarence Thomas to replace Marshall. Marshall died of heart failure at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, at 2:58 pm on January 24, 1993 at the age of 84. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.