Thurgood Marshall, the head attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund who also oversaw Brown v. Board of Education, and Vivian “Buster” Burey Marshall were married for 25 years before Vivian “Buster” Burey Marshall’s passing on February 11, 1955.

Thurgood Marshall was an American civil rights activist (1954). Her husband became the first African-American justice of the U.S. Supreme Court after she passed away.

Vivian Burey Marshall Cause Of Death

Marshall had pleurisy or the flu in the 1950s, but she endured months of illness. Later, she discovered she had lung cancer. As he was overseeing the Brown v. Board of Education case at the US Supreme Court, she kept her illness a secret from her husband for months.

On May 17, 1954, after it was decided, Marshall informed her husband of her condition. In his book Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Fight for Equality, Richard Kluger names Burey as one of two individuals who had indirectly active but significant influences on the Brown v. Board of Education ruling (2011).

After 25 years of marriage, Marshall passed away from lung cancer on February 11, 1955, the day before her 44th birthday.