After graduating from Howard University Law School in 1933, Thurgood Marshall worked at his own law practice for three years. Then he went to work for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a civil rights group. Marshall worked on many important cases while at the NAACP, but by 1961 he was ready for a change and needed to earn more money to support his family. Marshall thought he might get a job at a private law firm, but President John F. Kennedy had a different idea: President Kennedy asked Marshall to become a federal judge for the United States Court of Appeals in New York.