There is properly no history, only biography.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Making of America series traces the constitutional history of the United States through overlapping biographies of American men and women. The debates that raged when our nation was founded have been argued ever since: How should the Constitution be interpreted? What is the meaning, and where are the limits, of personal liberty? What is the proper role of the federal government? Who should be included in “we the people”? Each biography in the series tells the story of an American leader who helped shape the United States of today.
The following images are courtesy of Alamy: This page, 30,000 Protestors. This page, Thurgood Marshall, age 2. This page, LBJ and Thurgood Marshall. This page, House of Representatives, 1939. The following images are courtesy of Getty: This page, Women Protestors. This page, bus in front of Tar Paper School. This page, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. This page, House of Representatives, 2018. The following images are courtesy of the Afro-American: This page, Thurgood’s parents. This page, Irene Morgan. This page, Spottswood Robinson and Oliver Hill. Courtesy of Lincoln University: This page, Lloyd Gaines. Courtesy of Spelman College: This page, Barbara Johns. This page: Fred Schilling, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States. All other images are public domain, courtesy of the National Archives, Baltimore Archives, the Smithsonian, or the Library of Congress.
Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for and may be obtained from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-1-4197-4104-3
eISBN 978-1-68335-830-5
Text copyright © 2020 Teri Kanefield
Edited by Howard W. Reeves
Book design by Sara Corbett
Published in 2020 by Abrams Books for Young Readers, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.
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PROLOGUE:
A Public Enemy
1 Way Up South
2 College Days
3 Top Man in the Class
4 The Equalization Strategy
5 A Social Engineer
6 Speaking Out
7 Mr. Civil Rights
8 Brown v. Board of Education
9 Massive Resistance
10 Judge Marshall
11 A More Perfect Union
12 Legacy
TIMELINE
SELECTED WRITINGS OF THURGOOD MARSHALL
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INDEX
The year was 1967. America was in tumult. African Americans were protesting in the streets, demanding equality. Women, too, were demanding equality, and they, too, were marching. A few militants even talked about using violence to secure equal rights for African Americans. People were protesting the war in Vietnam. Some of the protesters openly flouted the law. College campuses and cities like San Francisco were hotbeds of what was called counter-culture unrest, with young people rejecting what they thought of as restrictive traditional values. They rejected the idea that African Americans were expected to be content with second-class citizenship. They rejected the notion that women should limit their career ambitions to jobs deemed appropriate, like secretary, nurse, or elementary school teacher.
It seemed to many that America was unraveling. Large swaths of the population, mostly in southern, suburban, and rural communities, were alarmed and angry about these upheavals. Many of them placed the blame on one man: Thurgood Marshall.
Thurgood Marshall was the lawyer who had dedicated his career to ending racial segregation. His work culminated in a 1954 Supreme Court decision called Brown v. Board of Education, the case that outlawed racial segregation in schools. Brown v. Board of Education disrupted the South and became a catalyst for the civil rights movement, which in turn paved the way for the women’s rights movement and the 1960s counterculture revolution.
In the words of one U.S. senator, Thurgood Marshall “was considered a public enemy of the South.”
On June 13, 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson—who hailed from Texas and had long been an advocate of racial equality under the law—called a press conference. He stood in the White House Rose Garden next to Thurgood Marshall and announced that he was nominating Marshall to the United States Supreme Court.
“I believe he has already earned his place in history,” President Johnson told the assembled crowd, “but I think it will be greatly enhanced by his service on the Court. I believe he earned that appointment . . . he is the best qualified by training and by very valuable service to the country.”
The word spread like a wildfire. Letters poured in to the president and members of Congress. Some people were thrilled. Others were horrified. “Please, sir, no N— on the Supreme Court bench,” came a typical letter, “with looting and burning and riots all over the country . . . so many feel as we do.”
Senator Strom Thurmond from South Carolina was determined to block Marshall’s nomination. He was the author of the Southern Manifesto, a 1956 document denouncing efforts by the federal government to end segregation. Thurmond joined with three other southern senators: John McClellan from Arkansas, Sam Ervin from North Carolina, and James Eastland of Mississippi. All four were on the Senate Judiciary Committee, so they would have a chance to question Thurgood Marshall in an open hearing. All four resented what Thurgood Marshall had done in their states as an activist lawyer.
Senator Thurmond told his staff to start digging. He wanted dirt he could use to prevent Marshall from taking a place on the United States Supreme Court. His research team plunged into their task. Hearings would begin within a few weeks. They didn’t have much time to come up with a plan.