Retro Raunch Revisit

H A P P Y  B I R T H D A Y  T O
OCT 2, 1967: Thurgood Marshall is sworn in as America's 1st black justice of the US Supreme Court by Chief Justice Earl Warren (whom back in Sept had finished the Warren Commission's controversial final report on the Nov 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy). Having previously been chief counsel for the NAACP beginning in 1936, Marshall was the architect & executor of the legal strategy that forever ended the official era of American racial segregation. From 1938-61, he had argued more than a dozen cases before the Court, successfully challenging Jim Crow separatism -- most notably in public education as with his groundbreaking victory in May 1954's Brown vs. Board of Education of Topkea, Kansas that was a landmark decision that outlawed state-sponsored segregation in school classrooms, declaring the doctrinal practice of "separate but equal" unconstitutional. In Sept 1961, Kennedy nominated Marshall to the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals. In Jul 1965, President Lyndon Johnson appointed him as the first black Solicitor General and then nominated him to the Supreme Court in Jun 1967. Along with setting up the Legal Defense Fund, he further helped change laws by fighting workplace discrimination based on race & sex, once called jazz great Louis Armstrong "The number one Uncle Tom! The worst in the U.S.!", challenged whites-only juries, battled prejudicial restrictions/preventions that barred the renting/buying of homes, stood up for unions, tackled censorship in pornography, was staunchly anti-death penalty, advocated for prison law libraries, and defended the polarizing practice of affirmative action that brought big backlash. Marshall retired in Oct 1991 & died in Jan 1993.