Another first in U.S. stamp history.

The first U.S. stamp for 2003 will honor Thurgood Marshall, the first black person to serve as a U.S. Supreme Court justice. The 37-cent stamp commemorative issue will feature a photo of Marshall taken in 1967 when he was named to the nation’s highest judicial post.

The new stamp is the 26th in the Black Heritage series, which has hailed outstanding black personages from various fields of endeavor. Some of the previous honorees in the series include Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King Jr., Scott Joplin, Ida B. Wells, Benjamin 0. Davis Sr., Roy Wilkins, A. Philip Randolph, and Lawrence native Langston Hughes, who was honored in January 2002.

Born in Baltimore July 2, 1908, Marshall graduated from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania in 1930. Later that, year he entered Howard University Law School and graduated first in his class in 1933.

In 1934, Marshall began to serve as pro bono counsel for the Baltimore branch of the NAACP. In 1938, he was promoted to chief counsel and became responsible for running the NAACP’s legal office.

Marshall’s most famous civil rights accomplishment came in 1954 when he prevailed in the landmark Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that struck down segregation in public schools.

The Marshall stamp will be released Jan. 7 in Washington.