LBJ Puts Thurgood Marshall On The Court (1967)
This Day in Esoteric Political History
Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia
4.6 • 982 Ratings
🗓️ 12 June 2025
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It's June 12. This day in 1967, President Johnson nominates Thurgood Marshall as the first Black Supreme Court justice.
Jody, NIki, and Kellie discuss Marshall's stories legal career up until this point -- but why Johnson was still taking a major risk in putting him forward.
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Our team: Jacob Feldman, Researcher/Producer; Brittani Brown, Producer; Khawla Nakua, Transcripts; music by Teen Daze and Blue Dot Sessions; Audrey Mardavich is our Executive Producer at Radiotopia
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to This Day, a history show from Radiotopia. |
| 0:07.0 | My name is Jody Avergan. |
| 0:09.0 | This day, June, 1967, President Lyndon Johnson nominates then Solicitor General Thurgood Marshall to a seat on the Supreme Court. |
| 0:20.0 | He was the first African American nominee and went on to be the first African-American justice. No surprise in the heat of 1967. This was not the smoothest nomination. Lots of pushback, lots of attempts to smear Marshall's reputation, even though he had a sterling record up to this point. And then there's this fundamental question |
| 0:38.0 | that we will try and get into of why exactly did LBJ pick him in this moment in the first place? |
| 0:44.3 | Here to discuss, as always, Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wowsley. |
| 0:49.7 | Hello there. Hello, Jody. Hey there. So I am fascinated by this question. |
| 0:54.8 | Why did LBJ do this? |
| 0:56.8 | I guess I'm fascinated by a lot of why did LBJ do that? |
| 1:00.4 | But let's first get to know Thurgood Marshall a little bit. |
| 1:04.6 | I mentioned he has a sort of monumental track record or reputation by this point already. |
| 1:11.5 | So where do we start? |
| 1:12.9 | So I feel like I should start by saying my fellow Howard alum, I got to do my hair flip. |
| 1:18.6 | We had the vaguest bets on how long it would take for you to mention Howard. |
| 1:23.6 | I honestly thought we'd get past the first sentence, so bad on me. |
| 1:28.0 | My fellow Howard Alam Thurgood Marshall is known as Mr. Civil Rights. |
| 1:32.6 | I mean, if you know anything about him, typically it's Brown v. Board of Education. |
| 1:36.8 | He's like the lead attorney on that. |
| 1:38.5 | He's leading up tons of civil rights cases. |
| 1:42.5 | And he has this really bigger than life sort of image. |
| 1:47.5 | It's certainly within the civil rights movement, but his personality as well reflects |
| 1:52.2 | that. |
... |
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