June 13, 1967: Thurgood Marshall was nominated to become the first African American justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. He became one of eleven African Americans appointed to the federal judiciary by President Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration. This included Southern District of New York Judge Constance Baker Motley becoming the first Black woman to hold a federal judiciary lifetime appointment. Marshall later told the story of the nomination day. He was Johnson’s Solicitor General at the time. Attorney General Ramsey Clark told him, “The boss wants to see you.” After waiting for a few minutes Marshall walked into the Oval Office. He recalled: “I went in and we chatted—the President and I. He said, ‘You know something, Thurgood, I’m going to put you on the Supreme Court.’ I said, ‘Well, thank you, sir.’ We talked a little while. We went out to the press and he announced it. We came back in the room and I said, ‘Now, Mr. President, if it’s all right with you I’d like to call my wife. It would be better than for her to hear it on the radio.’”
Citations: Thurgood Marshall, “Oral history transcript, Thurgood Marshall, interview 1 (I), 7/10/1969,” by T.H. Baker, July 10, 1969, 10-11, https://www.discoverlbj.org/item/oh-marshallt-19690710-1-74-216; Neil D. McFeeley, Appointment of Judges: The Johnson Presidency (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987), 81, https://archive.org/details/appointmentofjud00mcfe; Thomas J. O’Halloran, “Thurgood Marshall,” photograph (location unknown, September 17, 1957), https://www.loc.gov/item/2017657589/.
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