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Hey, history lovers. I'm Mike Rosenwald with Retropod, a show about the past, rediscovered.

So here's the thing about history.

Sometimes it just happens.

Serendipity.

Coincidence.

Other times, there's some real stagecraft involved.

Case in point, Thurgood Marshall.

More than 50 years ago, Thurgood Marshall was about to become the first African American Supreme Court justice. He knew the moment was historic. It would last

several lifetimes beyond his, and he wanted it to be remembered this way. Thurgood Marshall, the first African American member of the Supreme Court,

took the constitutional oath of office from Hugo Black,

a white associate justice who had once been a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

By the time he was nominated to the Supreme Court, Marshall had a long history of fighting

for civil rights.

The grandson of an enslaved man, Marshall had become one of the country's most famous

litigators.

He led the NAACP's legal team in the landmark

1954 case of Brown versus the Board of Education, which ended legal racial

segregation in U.S. public schools. As a result, most Southerners at the time

opposed his nomination to the Supreme Court. Eleven southern senators had voted against his confirmation,

complaining about his, quote, activist temperament.

So Marshall understood the symbolism his swearing in would hold.

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