Findings and purposes

(a) Findings Congress finds the following: (1) Thurgood Marshall led the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Legal Defense and Educational Fund from 1940 to 1961, and successfully argued 29 of 32 civil rights cases before the United States Supreme Court, including the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case that ended racial segregation of public schools. (2) Thurgood Marshall was appointed by President John F. Kennedy to serve as a Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit from 1961 to 1965. He was then appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson to serve as United States Solicitor General from 1965 to 1967. (3) Nominated by President Lyndon Johnson and confirmed by the United States Senate, Thurgood Marshall became the first African American to serve on the United States Supreme Court and served as an Associate Justice from 1967 to 1991. (4) As a result of his long legal career, Thurgood Marshall is credited with ending legal segregation in America. (5) Public School 103, now better known as the Justice Thurgood Marshall School, located at 1315 Division Street in Baltimore, Maryland, was the site of Thurgood Marshall’s elementary education. (6) The Justice Thurgood Marshall School is owned and operated as a museum by the Beloved Community Services Corporation, which has completed a historic restoration for adaptive re-use of the School. (7) Congress authorized the National Park Service to prepare a special resource study of Public School 103 in 2019, which the National Park Service transmitted to Congress in 2023. The National Park Service found that Public School 103 met its criteria for national significance and suitability for addition to the National Park System. (b) Purpose The purpose of this Act is to preserve, protect, and interpret for the benefit of future generations the significant historic contributions of Justice Thurgood Marshall by establishing the elementary school he attended as a national historic site and providing for the site’s administration as an affiliated area of the National Park System.