What Happened
On this day in 1967, Chief Justice Earl Warren swore in Thurgood Marshall as the first Black justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Years earlier, as the NAACP's chief counsel, Marshall built the legal strategy that ended official school segregation with Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. President Lyndon B. Johnson nominated him in June 1967, and the Senate confirmed him 69–11. He served on the Court until 1991.
Why It Still Matters
Thurgood Marshall understood that the law could be a weapon used against Black people — and he decided to pick it up and use it the other way. He didn't just win cases. He changed what America was legally allowed to be. When he took that seat on the Supreme Court, it wasn't just a personal achievement. It was a statement that the highest court in the land now had to reckon with a man who had spent his whole career making it live up to its own promises.
He argued the case that ended legal segregation in schools. Then he took a seat on the court that would decide what came next.
Around the Kitchen Table
Where were you when you heard the news? Do you remember the first time you saw a Black person in a position of power that you'd never seen before? What did that moment feel like — and what did you think it meant for what was possible?
Today on Grown Folks Bizness
History and Grown Folks Say. We've been watching the courts our whole lives — sometimes with hope, sometimes with dread. Today's a good day to talk about what justice looks like to us, and whether we've ever really seen it delivered.
Sources
HISTORY · National Archives · Oyez
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