Cecilia Suyat Marshall was an American civil rights activist and historian from Hawaii who was married to Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American U.S. Supreme Court Justice, from 1955 until he died in 1993. Cecilia “Cissy” Suyat was born on July 20, 1928, in Pu’unene, Maui, Hawaii. Marshall’s parents emigrated from the Philippines in 1910. Marshall’s father ran a printing business, and her mother died when she was young. She was raised in Hawaii with many siblings.
Suyat met Thurgood Marshall and married him in 1955, following the death of Marshall’s previous wife, Vivian Burey, from lung cancer. Marshall and Suyat married on December 17, 1955. The service was presided over by Roy Wilkins, secretary of the NAACP, at St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in Harlem, New York. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks were among those who visited their apartment.
Is Cecilia Suyat Marshall Alive?
Cecilia Suyat Marshall is dead. Cecilia Suyat Marshall died on November 22, 2022, at the age of 94, in Falls Church, Virginia.