Thurgood Marshall is nominated as justice to the U.S. Supreme Court - June 13th, 1967

On this day in 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson nominated Judge Thurgood Marshall to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class as a production of I
Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class,
a show that strives to know at least a little
bit more about history every day. I'm Gay Bluesier, and
today we're looking at the life and times of Thurgood Marshal,

(00:20):
including the pivotal role he played in the civil rights
movement and his landmark appointment as the first black member
of the U s Supreme Corps. The day was June
nineteen sixty seven. President Lyndon B. Johnson nominated Judge Thurgood

(00:41):
Marshall to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States.
Marshall was well qualified for the role, having served as
both a judge in the US Court of Appeals and
as the country's Solicitor General, where he argued cases in
front of the Supreme Court on behalf of the federal government.
Despite this in pressive resume and his well attested character,

(01:03):
Marshall's appointment led to heated debate in Congress. The backlash
proved to be a bump in the road, though, as
Marshall's appointment was eventually confirmed, making him the first African
American in history to sit on the Supreme Court. Thoroughgood
Marshal he later shortened his name to Thurgood, was born
and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, at the turn of the

(01:25):
twentieth century. His mother, Norma Arica Williams, was a school teacher,
and his father, William Canfield Marshall, worked as a dining
car waiter on a railroad and then later as the
chief steward at a fancy country club. The Marshals were
by no means wealthy, but they lived a middle class lifestyle,

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and that was notable in itself when you consider that
Thurgood's great grandfather had been an enslaved man. Thurgood was
keenly aware of the social progress that had been made
in just a generation or two, and he would later
make his life's mission to push that progress even further.
Thurgood's interest in law stemmed from that of his father, William.

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He had always been interested in legal proceedings and how
the court system worked, so much so that in his
free time he would go down to the local courthouse
and listen to the civil and criminal trials. Sometimes he
brought his two sons along too. Thurgood and his older
brother William, when they returned home, the three of them
would lay out all the arguments they'd heard that day

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and then debate the outcomes around the dinner table. Those
discussions happened on a weekly basis, sometimes multiple times a week,
and in all that excitement, Thoroughgood became fascinated with law
and with how to use words to confront and justice.
Years later, in nineteen sixty five, he talked about his
father's early influence, saying, quote, he did it by teaching

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me to argue, by challenging my logic on every point,
by making me prove every statement. He never told me
to be a lawyer, but he turned me into one.
Thurgood Marshall graduated from Lincoln University in nineteen thirty with
a bachelor's degree in American literature and philosophy. He then
enrolled in law school at Howard University in Washington, d C.

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At the time, the dean of the law school was
a respected civil rights lawyer named Charles Houston. Houston was
a notably strict professor, but Marshall responded well to his
demanding teaching style. In fact, the two hit it off
so well that Houston became a mentor to Marshal, and
in nineteen thirty six, they began working closely together in

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the legal division of the N Double A c P.
Houston had resigned as dean a year earlier so that
he could become the first legal counsel for the organization.
By the time Thurgood joined the group, Houston had already
become the director of the entire legal division. The two
worked side by side on civil rights cases for the

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next few years, and then, when Houston retired from the
role in nineteen forty, Marshall took over as director, holding
that top legal post at the N Double A c
P throughout the nineteen forties and fifties. Marshall's work with
the organization became the cornerstone of his whole career. As
the group's chief council, he argued a record setting thirty

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two cases before the U. S. Supreme Court, and get this.
Out of those thirty two civil rights cases, Marshal one
twenty nine. Even today, he remains near the top of
the list for most cases ever argued and one before
the Supreme Court. Among his many landmark victories was nineteen

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fifty four's Brown versus Board of Education, the case that
brought down school segregation in America and helped launch the
African American civil rights movement of the next two decades.
In nineteen sixty one, Marshall left the n double a
c P After being appointed to the U. S Court
of Appeals by President John F. Kennedy. During his time

(05:02):
on the Court of Appeals, Marshall issued over one hundred
decisions on civil rights battles, as well as other hot
button issues like women's rights and police brutality. Amazingly, none
of those hundred plus decisions were overturned by the Supreme Court.
In nineteen sixty five, President Lyndon Johnson appointed Marshall the

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first black Solicitor General in US history, and he had
a similarly strong track record during his two years in
that post as well. He argued nineteen cases before the
Supreme Court, and one fourteen of them. With a record
like that, it wasn't long before President Johnson decided that
Marshall deserved a seat on the highest court himself. However,

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there were a couple of problems with this plan, and
chief among them was that there wasn't a vacancy on
the Supreme Court, at least not yet. Johnson reportedly engineered
a vacancy himself by creating a conflict of interest for
one of the sitting justices, a fellow Democrat named Tom Clark. Allegedly,

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President Johnson appointed Clark's son as Attorney General in order
to prompt his father to step down so that it
wouldn't look like nepotism. It's up for debate whether this
was done specifically to open a seat for Marshall, but
he certainly was the one who filled it. Still, even
with Johnson on his side, Marshall's appointment to the Supreme

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Court was anything but easy. His confirmation process was held
over the course of a long week in the summer
of nineteen sixty seven. During that time, Marshall endured more
hours of questioning than any Supreme Court nominee before him.
That was largely thanks to a handful of senators from
Southern states who really did their best to sink his nomination.

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For instance, the head of the committee for Marshall's nomination
was Mississippi Senator James Eastland. He personally owned a plantation
that employed more than one one hundred black sharecroppers, and
in nineteen fifty six, his daughter had been crowned miss
Confederacy with him in charge, Marshall's appointment was hardly a
sure thing. Eastland wasn't alone in his opposition either. Senator

(07:14):
strom Thurman was also on the nomination committee, and his
main contribution was to subject Marshall to a kind of
Jim Crow era literacy test. He crossed examined Marshall, quizzing
him on obscure, absurdly specific portions of political history. For example,
he was asked to name every member of the Congressional
committee that had reviewed the fourteenth Amendment in eighteen sixty six.

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Marshall couldn't do that, but of course there's no reason
why Supreme Court justice would need to rattle off random
information like that anyway. It's also worth noting that a
little later in the proceedings, Ted Kennedy asked strom Thurman
if he could name the committee members from eighteen sixty six,
and guess what he couldn't either. The Southern Senators drilled

(08:02):
Marshal because of the color of his skin and because
of what he represented, not because they had any serious
doubts about his legal knowledge or fitness to serve. In
the end, the case against Marshall was so flimsy that
the Judiciary Committee approved his nomination with a resounding eleven
to five vote, and then the city confirmed him as

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well with an equally definitive vote of sixty nine to eleven.
After what had been an exhausting confirmation process, Thurgood Marshal
was finally sworn in as a Justice of the Supreme
Court on October two, nineteen sixty seven. The next few
years went smoothly for Marshal, as he had joined a

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very liberal Supreme Court, one that aligned well with his
own political views. However, that would change drastically over the
course of the nineteen seventies and eighties. In fact, during
Marshall's twenty four years on the court, Republican President made
eight consecutive appointments, transforming the court and filling every spot

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on the bench except for Marshals. That means that in
the second half of his tenure, Marshall was in the
minority and found his opinions increasingly overruled. As you might imagine,
that wasn't an easy transition for someone whose entire career
had been built on his neck for winning cases. As
a result, Marshall became more and more isolated from the

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rest of the court, with his contributions mostly limited to
strongly worded dissents about his colleague's rulings. Still, Marshall never
gave up. At one point he even vowed to remain
on the Court until he was a hundred and ten
years old. He gave it a value and effort, but
in the end he became too ill to continue serving

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and had to step down in two years later, he
passed away at the age of eighty four. Third Good
Marshal had been somewhat hindered after finally making it to
the Supreme Court, but his presence on the bench still
had a profound impact on the country and on the
issues he spent his whole life fighting for. Even if

(10:09):
you don't have a personal connection to martial service, or
if you don't share all of his political views, there's
still so much to admire about his legacy, his commitment
to changing the system from within, and to being a
voice for the voiceless, our ideals that should resonate with
all of us, regardless of race or party preference. As

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Marshall once said, 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 I'm Gay Bluesier

(10:50):
and hopefully you now know a little more about history
today than you did yesterday. You can learn even more
about history by following us on Twitter, Acebook and Instagram
at t D i HC Show, and if you have
any comments or suggestions, you can always send them my
way at This Day at I heart media dot com.

(11:12):
Special thanks to guest producers Joey pat and Casey Pegram,
and thanks to you for listening. I'll see you back
here again tomorrow for another day in History class.