A Shining Milestone

Yesterday I noted the 50th anniversary of Strom Thurmond’s filibuster of the 1957 Civil Rights bill, which was the longest filibuster in U.S. Senate history.

Today, I’d like to recall a much finer moment in our history, and that is the 40th anniversary of the confirmation of Thurgood Marshall as this country’s first African American Supreme Court justice by the Senate (in the 1954 photo, he appears in the center with George E.C. Hayes on the left and James M. Nabrit on the right; the three comprised the legal team that won the Brown v. Board of Education decision).

As noted here…

Marshall graduated first in his class from Howard University Law School in 1933, and he was drafted by Charles Hamilton Houston (under whom he studied at Howard) to help with the civil rights battles then being waged by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He first served as special counsel for the NAACP and then as the director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. He was the mastermind behind the litigation strategy that challenged racial oppression in education, housing, transportation, electoral politics, and criminal justice.

As the Wikipedia article notes, Marshall served on the Supreme Court until he stepped down due to illness in 1991, at which time he said that his successor should not be the “wrong Negro” (though Poppy Bush obliged and named someone anyway who fit the description perfectly – that was not an association made by Marshall, though, since Clarence Thomas had not yet been officially considered, but I think my description of his successor fits in the context of Marshall’s words).

Fortunately, though, he saw the election of a president more widely regarded by African Americans than George H.W. Bush before his death on January 24, 1993.

And I can assure you that, someday when history looks at the careers of these two men, Thomas won’t be held in anything close to the same regard as his predecessor.