'What each of us must come to realize is that our intent always comes through.'

1978: Thurgood Marshall, commencement address at the University of Virginia

"Where you see wrong or inequality or injustice, speak out, because this is your country. This is your democracy. Make it. Protect it. Pass it on."

Hear a narrative account of Marshall's 'simple' life and great impact

This podcast traces Marshall's rise from a frontier upbringing to chief justice, examining how a "country boy" born in a log cabin became the most important figure in the early Supreme Court.

John Marshall presided over more than 1,100 Supreme Court decisions

During his 34-year tenure, the Marshall court issued 1,129 decisions, including 1,042 unanimous rulings. Marshall authored more than 500 majority opinions—over half of the court's total output during his tenure as chief justice.

'The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them'

- Ida B. Wells, co-founder of the NAACP (1862-1931)

'Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.'

- Author James Baldwin (1924–1987)

'Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.'

- Harper Lee from "To Kill a Mockingbird"

'A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.'

- Jackie Robinson, the first Black MLB player (1919-1972)

'You will never feel proud of your work if you find no joy within it; your best work is always joyful work.'

- Stevie Wonder (1950-present)

'If the time is not ripe, we have to ripen the time.'

- Activist Dorothy Height (1912-2010)

'The arts and sciences are avatars of human creativity. It's our attempt to influence things, the universe internal to ourselves and external to us.'

- Mae Jemison (1956-present), the first Black woman in space

'We become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.'

- President Jimmy Carter (1924-2024)

'Your failures are your accomplishments because it makes you prepared for whatever it is that you are going to do next.'

- Director Lee Daniels (1959-present)

'I have learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances.'

- Martha Washington (1731-1802)

'It's those who lie outside ordinary experience who have the most to teach us.'

- Author Malcolm Gladwell (1963 - present)

'It's the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief. And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen.'

- Legendary boxer Muhammad Ali (1942–2016)

A quote by Alex Haley

"Either you deal with what is the reality, or you can be sure that the reality is going to deal with you."

'It might be that some day I shall be drowned by the sea, or die of pneumonia from sleeping out at night, or be robbed and strangled by strangers. These things happen. Even so, I shall be ahead because of trusting the beach, the night and strangers.'

-Janet Reno, the US' first female attorney general (1938-2016)

'Action indeed is the sole medium of expression for ethics.'

- Jane Addams (1860-1935)

'Keep working on a plan. Make no little plans. Make the biggest one you can think of, and spend the rest of your life carrying it out.'

- President Harry Truman (1884-1972)

Explore the biographies and official portraits of every US attorney general since 1789

The DOJ's official archive features profiles of every attorney general in American history—from Edmund Randolph, appointed by George Washington in 1789, to the present day—including their official portraits.

'The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.'

- Mark Twain, from "Pudd'nhead Wilson and Other Tales"

A Mississippi man was tried six times for the same crime, each time before an all-white or nearly all-white jury

This podcast investigates how prosecutor Doug Evans systematically struck Black jurors across decades of cases. The team built a database of every jury strike Evans made over 20 years, uncovering a racial pattern that was later cited by the Supreme Court when it overturned Curtis Flowers' conviction in 2019.

Nelson Mandela delivered his famous anti-apartheid speech in court in 1964

During the Rivonia Trial, Mandela was charged along with several others for opposing South Africa's apartheid government, and expected to be sentenced to death. He showed up to court wearing traditional Xhosa attire and delivered an hours-long address against racial domination. Nelson said he hoped to live to see realized his ideal of a democratic and free society, but announced that he was prepared to die for his cause.

Langston Hughes poems inspired Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'I Have a Dream'

In 1959, King wrote to Hughes, saying, "I can no longer count the number of times and places … in which I have read your poems." Scholars believe that Hughes' words—particularly his poems "Harlem" and "I Dream a World"—inspired King's most famous speech, "I Have a Dream."

Brandenburg v. Ohio set the modern standard for when speech can be punished as incitement

A Ku Klux Klan leader's conviction for a threatening speech prompted the Supreme Court in 1969 to rule that speech is punishable as incitement only if it is directed at—and likely to produce—imminent lawless action.

The story of Dollree Mapp, whose legal challenge over her 1957 conviction for possessing "obscene material" led to a major strengthening of the Fourth Amendment

The US Constitution is widely regarded as the longest-standing written national constitution still in force—see how it has influenced rights worldwide.

Watch a 1934 short film starring jazz legend Cab Calloway, a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance's music scene

Existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre coined the famous phrase 'Hell is—other people' in his play 'No Exit'

SpongeBob exemplifies Aristotle's philosophy for living well because he understands that happiness doesn't come from external factors like money, recognition, or power.

After NASA's Voyager 1 captured Earth as a single pixel as it left the solar system in 1990, astronomer Carl Sagan used the image to reflect on humanity's fragility and the responsibility to protect 'the only world we've ever known.'

Abraham Lincoln was almost assassinated weeks before his inauguration as he traveled from Illinois to DC through Baltimore in 1861; it took two independent claims for Lincoln to be convinced the threat was real

Before writing 'Walden,' transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau nearly burned down his hometown with a campfire that grew out of control.

American short story writer Flannery O'Connor raised 40 peacocks, which became potent symbols for her fiction's elegant violence

Quincy Jones' 'Big Band Bossa Nova' helped introduce bossa nova—a jazz-influenced Brazilian genre—to the US

See a ranking of the best (and worst) Federal Reserve Chairs since 1914 out of the 16 men and women who have held the office since.

American dance legend Martha Graham, sometimes called 'the Picasso of dance,' refused to perform at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and conceived the piece 'Chronicle' in response to the experience.

The rivalry between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson centered on federalism—the question of how much power the federal government should hold relative to the states.

The Brothers Grimm were lawyers before they were storytellers, and became interested in fairy tales as they began investigating how rules and customs had been passed down through cultures.

'Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone,' a work by American painter Thomas Moran, inspired Congress to establish Yellowstone National Park.

A Yale student wrote a profound essay about the consulting industry's influence on elite college students that was published in a book of her writing after she died in a post-graduation car accident.

Salvador Dalí believed he was his own dead brother, who had died nine months before he was born

In 2018, 26-year-old missionary John Allen Chau was killed by tribesmen after attempting to reach and evangelize on India's isolated North Sentinel Island

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

Researchers believe the brain consolidates memories, processes emotions, and plans for the future during dream states

Tattoos remain visible on your skin thanks to immune cells called macrophages

Search a massive database of over 4 decades of clues from the TV quiz show 'Jeopardy!'

How Amazon operates a 'flywheel' business model, a self-reinforcing cycle that drives continuous growth