Diversity in the federal judiciary was virtually nonexistent in 1967. Up to that time, only five blacks had ever been appointed to Article III judgeships. The big break with the past occurred when President Lyndon Johnson nominated Thurgood Marshall to the U.S. Supreme Court in June 1967. Wil Haygood has written a compelling book about Marshall’s tumultuous confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the first such extended hearings in history. It is a measured if sometimes flawed account of how Marshall’s appointment changed the legal profession and the country.
Although Marshall’s nomination was widely celebrated at the time as a bold and progressive gesture, it was met with derision in the South, where Marshall had won dozens of civil rights victories for blacks since the 1930s. As explained by the author, no one felt this derision quite so personally as the five segregationist senators who dominated the Judiciary Committee, including Chairman James Eastland of Mississippi, John McClellan of Arkansas, Sam Ervin of North Carolina, Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, and Robert Byrd of West Virginia. As the confirmation hearing got underway, this quintet determinately threw down the gauntlet.
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