Speaker 1: Welcome to Part Time Genius, the production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Guess what, Mango?
Speaker 1: What's that? Will? All? Right?
Speaker 3: Well, you know how people like to keep tabs on
Speaker 3: their old classmates, you know, just you can see what
Speaker 3: everybody's wound up doing.
Speaker 1: That is why I joined Facebook. I want to see
Speaker 1: what people are doing. I want to see how my
Speaker 1: high school rivals are doing terribly.
Speaker 2: I hope did you recently join Facebook?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: Yeah, loves to discover it like your grandmother. That's pretty great.
Speaker 3: Actually, I was thinking about that this week while reading
Speaker 3: up on THURGOODE. Marshal, and it actually made me feel
Speaker 3: so bad for the Lincoln College class of nineteen thirty,
Speaker 3: which I know you're I think you're.
Speaker 2: An expert on the Lincoln College class of nineteen thirty.
Speaker 1: I am not, but I'm guessing it's because they graduated
Speaker 1: a future Supreme Court justice.
Speaker 2: Well, that's the thing.
Speaker 3: So Lincoln's class of nineteen thirty was actually home to
Speaker 3: a slew of prominent black leaders. So for literature, you
Speaker 3: had Langston Hughes. For music, there was Cab Callaway. Then
Speaker 3: of course there was Marshall himself, who made this colossal
Speaker 3: name for himself in the legal system and on the
Speaker 3: political side of things, the class said Kwame Nakruma of
Speaker 3: the future President of Ghana.
Speaker 2: Isn't that unbelievable?
Speaker 3: I mean, no matter which field the other students went into,
Speaker 3: they were all pretty much guaranteed to be out shown
Speaker 3: by those classmates. But the more I poked around Marshall's biography,
Speaker 3: the more I wanted to know.
Speaker 2: How did he become such.
Speaker 3: A larger than life figure in the courtroom, how did
Speaker 3: he look at the constitution and did he really take
Speaker 3: the oath of office from an ex clan member?
Speaker 4: So let's dive in.
Speaker 3: Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm
Speaker 3: Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good
Speaker 3: friend mangesh Hot Ticketer and on the other side of
Speaker 3: the soundproof glass watching old Days of Our Lives reruns.
Speaker 3: This gives him an excuse to do this because I
Speaker 3: know he likes to do this on the quiet, but
Speaker 3: in honor of Thurgood Marshall.
Speaker 2: That's our friend and producer Tristan McNeil.
Speaker 1: I know it's a tribute, but uh, I do feel
Speaker 1: like Tristan just loves his stories.
Speaker 2: He does. He definitely loves his stories.
Speaker 3: Well that was my first thought, but Tristan was so
Speaker 3: adamant about only watching episodes from the nineteen seventies and
Speaker 3: eighties that it made me wonder if there really was
Speaker 3: a connection. So we did a little bit of digging,
Speaker 3: of course, and it turns out that during his years
Speaker 3: on the bench, Justice Third Good Marshall was actually a big.
Speaker 2: Fan of Days of Our Lives.
Speaker 3: And I love this, but I mean, like really a
Speaker 3: fan of soap operas in general. And apparently he once
Speaker 3: told Justice Brennan there was quote a lot to be
Speaker 3: learned about life from soap operas.
Speaker 1: So things like how to stop your evil twin from
Speaker 1: stealing the men you love.
Speaker 3: I imagine these practical life lessons, and Justice Marshall didn't
Speaker 3: want to miss any of them. In fact, Time magazine
Speaker 3: ran to this report this was back in nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 3: claiming that Marshall would often call a recess right around
Speaker 3: one pm so that he could watch the latest Days
Speaker 3: of Our Lives episode in his chambers. You know, I
Speaker 3: guess they didn't have a way to a TVO or
Speaker 3: record things, did I just say TVO? Anyway, Sometimes he
Speaker 3: would be late to his next meeting because he didn't
Speaker 3: want to miss the end of an episode.
Speaker 2: I totally said TiVo.
Speaker 1: So obviously this is a funny thing to point out, because,
Speaker 1: you know, aside from his odd TV habit, which actually
Speaker 1: makes him feel pretty human, like, his legacy is just stunning.
Speaker 1: I mean, you think about the pivotal role he had
Speaker 1: in the civil rights movement. His landmark appointment is the
Speaker 1: first black member of the Supreme Court. There's just a
Speaker 1: ton to discuss here. Yeah, there definitely is. All right, well,
Speaker 1: I'll leave it up to you. Where do you want
Speaker 1: to start? How about with a bombshell? You know how
Speaker 1: I like to start these things, Yeah, with bombshells. Apparently,
Speaker 1: Third Good Marshall's name wasn't actually Thirgood Marshall when he
Speaker 1: was born in Maryland. This is in nineteen oh eight.
Speaker 1: He was actually given the name thorough Good Marshal, like
Speaker 1: the word thorough right good put together. But it was
Speaker 1: such a mouth and so annoying, the spell that Marshall
Speaker 1: told this reporter. By the time I reached the second grade,
Speaker 1: I got tired of spelling all that out and had
Speaker 1: shortened it to Thurgood.
Speaker 3: I love that he had decided this by second grade.
Speaker 3: And that's pretty amazing. All right, Well, I actually didn't
Speaker 3: know his name was abbreviated, but.
Speaker 2: What else did you dig up on his childhood?
Speaker 1: So he was born and raised in Baltimore, This is
Speaker 1: around the turn of the twentieth century. He had one
Speaker 1: older brother, this guy, William Aubrey Marshall. His mother was
Speaker 1: a school teacher, and his father, William Canfield Marshall, worked
Speaker 1: as a dining car waiter on a railroad and then
Speaker 1: later is this steward at a fancy country club. So
Speaker 1: the Marshals weren't exactly wealthy, but they felt middle class.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of amazing in itself when you consider
Speaker 1: that Goood's father was actually the grandson of a former slave.
Speaker 1: And this was not lost on Thoroughgood, like the social
Speaker 1: progress that was made just a generation or two, and
Speaker 1: of course later he'd make it his mission to sort
Speaker 1: of push progress even further.
Speaker 3: So I'm curious how did Thurgood get interested in law
Speaker 3: in the first place, because I was looking at lot
Speaker 3: about his early legal career, but there really wasn't a
Speaker 3: lot of insight into what made him want to be
Speaker 3: a lawyer.
Speaker 1: So from everything I read, it was really his father
Speaker 1: who kind of sparked this passion. His dad, William, was
Speaker 1: this amateur writer, and he'd also been interested in legal
Speaker 1: proceedings and how courts worked, and it was such an
Speaker 1: obsession for him that in his free time he liked
Speaker 1: to go down to the local courthouse and listen to
Speaker 1: the civil and criminal trials. And sometimes he'd bring his
Speaker 1: sons along too. But this is the amazing part. Right
Speaker 1: when they got home, the three of them would actually
Speaker 1: lay out all the arguments they'd heard that day and
Speaker 1: then had these big, lively debates around the dinner table.
Speaker 1: And sometimes these discussions would happen five times in a week.
Speaker 1: So in all this excitement, Thurgood really started to develop
Speaker 1: this interest in law and how to use words to
Speaker 1: confront and justice. In fact, we actually have their good's
Speaker 1: words on this. In nineteen sixty five, he talked about
Speaker 1: his father's influence, saying, quote, he did it by teaching
Speaker 1: me to argue, by challenging my logic on every point,
Speaker 1: by making me prove every statement. He never told me
Speaker 1: to be a lawyer, but he turned me into one.
Speaker 3: You know, my son is big into this series by
Speaker 3: John Grisham called Theodore Boone, have your.
Speaker 2: Kids I've discovered this yet.
Speaker 3: So that's all I think about law now is like
Speaker 3: what kids are in the courtroom, like listening to these cases.
Speaker 3: But did you get a sense for like what kinds
Speaker 3: of cases the marshals were scrutinizing when they were at home?
Speaker 1: So Gaye pulled a ton of this for us, and
Speaker 1: he couldn't track down specific cases, but it is easy
Speaker 1: to imagine that they would have seen a lot of
Speaker 1: cases involving racial discrimination. When Thurgood was growing up in Baltimore,
Speaker 1: the city's death rate for African Americans was actually double
Speaker 1: that of white residents, and because of segregation, he and
Speaker 1: his brother were actually forced to attend this all black
Speaker 1: public school. So he felt all of this at this
Speaker 1: really early age, and what he saw in both court
Speaker 1: and the classroom that really shaped the viewpoints he'd ultimately
Speaker 1: spend his life fighting for right.
Speaker 3: So he was obviously engaged in a lot of self education,
Speaker 3: a really curious kid and observing all these trials, debating
Speaker 3: law with his dad. But I'm curious, how was he
Speaker 3: in school? Like was he a pretty good student grade wise?
Speaker 3: He was excellent in high school.
Speaker 1: His grades were above average, and he made a name
Speaker 1: for himself on the debate team, you know, thanks to
Speaker 1: all this practice that he and his dad had had
Speaker 1: at home. But when it came to behavior, Good was
Speaker 1: actually kind of a trouble maker.
Speaker 2: Really.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you might even say he no, no, no.
Speaker 3: Do not say third Bad. I could tell I knew
Speaker 3: that's where you were going with that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's probably for the best. But he actually misbehaved
Speaker 1: a lot at school, and whenever he did, his teachers
Speaker 1: would make him read the Constitution as punishment.
Speaker 2: And here's the.
Speaker 1: Thing, Third Good gotten so much trouble that by the
Speaker 1: time he graduated in nineteen twenty five, which was a
Speaker 1: year early, he had memorized the entire Constitution.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: You know, it's funny they didn't realize how much they
Speaker 3: were contributing to his, you know, excellence in this in
Speaker 3: this field. And listening to you lay all this out,
Speaker 3: I mean, it's pretty amazing how all these different little
Speaker 3: things in his life seemed to be working together to
Speaker 3: sort of, you know, nudge him along a certain path.
Speaker 3: And I mean, I know we're looking at all this
Speaker 3: in hindsight and speaking in these broad terms, but his
Speaker 3: family history, his city, his school. His dad's interests, of course,
Speaker 3: and now even his punishments contributed to this. But you know,
Speaker 3: when you take it all together, it almost seems inevitable
Speaker 3: that he would become a lawyer and fight for civil rights.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I guess they're a good agreed with you,
Speaker 1: because after graduating college in nineteen thirty, he immediately applied
Speaker 1: to the University of Maryland law school. And this is
Speaker 1: actually where one of those nudges down the path comes in,
Speaker 1: because despite a glowing high school transcript, the college ultimately
Speaker 1: rejected They're Good because of the color of his skin.
Speaker 1: But even though this is jumping a little bit ahead,
Speaker 1: I want to give you some instant satisfaction by telling
Speaker 1: you that about five years after he applied, They're Good
Speaker 1: actually helped launch and win the case that brought an
Speaker 1: end to segregation at the very school that rejected him.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, it's pretty sweet vindication. That's pretty great and
Speaker 3: I can only imagine how good it must have felt
Speaker 3: when that verdict came in. And I'm curious, though, like,
Speaker 3: where did Marshall wind up studying law?
Speaker 1: So instead of Maryland, Marshall went to law school at
Speaker 1: Howard University, which is obviously historically black, though segregation wasn't
Speaker 1: an issue, and at the time, the dean of the
Speaker 1: law school was this super well respected civil rights lawyer
Speaker 1: named Charles Houston, and on campus, Houston had this reputation
Speaker 1: for being super strict and demanding, but Marshall actually responded
Speaker 1: well to the style of teaching, and in fact, the
Speaker 1: two hit it off so well that Houston became a
Speaker 1: mentor to Marshall and years later they worked closely together
Speaker 1: in the legal division of the NAACP.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and Marshall's work with the NAACP became the cornerstone
Speaker 3: of his career, so I definitely say he chose the
Speaker 3: right mentor in Houston. So when did Marshall first get
Speaker 3: involved with the NAACP. Was that straight out of law school?
Speaker 1: No, So, Marshall actually passed the bar exam and graduated
Speaker 1: from Howard with honors, but he spent his first few
Speaker 1: post grad years trying to get this private practice going
Speaker 1: in Baltimore. He landed a few small cases every now
Speaker 1: and then, but none of them paid very much, and
Speaker 1: things got so bad that in nineteen thirty four, Thurgood
Speaker 1: was forced to take a second job at an STD
Speaker 1: clinic just to make rent. In fact, if you remember
Speaker 1: breakthrough case I mentioned earlier, the one where Thurgood got
Speaker 1: the University of Maryland to desegregate, he was working the
Speaker 1: late shift at that clinic the whole time he prepped
Speaker 1: for the case.
Speaker 4: Oh wow.
Speaker 1: And even when he moved to New York City in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty six to work full time for the NAACP,
Speaker 1: Thurgood was so concerned that things wouldn't pan out as
Speaker 1: a lawyer that he didn't actually quit his job at
Speaker 1: the clinic. He just requested a six month leave of absence.
Speaker 1: That's how touch and go things were for him as
Speaker 1: a young lawyer.
Speaker 2: That is pretty wild.
Speaker 3: You mentioned Marshall's mentor was involved with the NAACP. Did
Speaker 3: he actually have something to do with Marshall getting called
Speaker 3: up to New York So.
Speaker 1: Charles Houston had actually resigned as dean in nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: five so that he could become the first legal counsel
Speaker 1: for the NUBACP, and by the time Marshall joined on
Speaker 1: a year later, Houston had already become the director of
Speaker 1: the group's legal division, and the two worked side by
Speaker 1: side on civil rights cases for the next few years,
Speaker 1: and then when Houston retired from the role in nineteen forty,
Speaker 1: Thurgood stepped in and he really didn't miss a beat.
Speaker 1: He stayed on as director all throughout the forties and
Speaker 1: the fifties.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's probably the portion of his career that
Speaker 3: I feel most familiar with, you know, all the landmark
Speaker 3: cases he tackled, and you know, not just his a
Speaker 3: justice serving on the Supreme Court, but as a lawyer
Speaker 3: arguing in front of the Supreme Court, which is perfect
Speaker 3: because I'll hand you the baton and you can walk
Speaker 3: us through it.
Speaker 1: But let's take a quick break first.
Speaker 3: You're listening to Part Time Genius and we're talking about
Speaker 3: how Thurgood Marshall earned his seat on the highest.
Speaker 2: Court in the country.
Speaker 1: And I feel like you were maybe alluding to this
Speaker 1: answer just before the break. You were saying that it
Speaker 1: was Marshall's time with the NAACP that really won him
Speaker 1: his acclaim.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's definitely true.
Speaker 3: I mean, Marshall served as the group's top attorney for
Speaker 3: a little over two decades and this was when he
Speaker 3: really made a name for himself because during that period
Speaker 3: he argued at record setting thirty two cases before the
Speaker 3: Supreme Court. And get this, So, out of those thirty
Speaker 3: two civil rights cases, Marshall won.
Speaker 2: Twenty nine of those, not a bad average at all.
Speaker 3: Even today, all these decades later, Marshall is still near
Speaker 3: the top of the list for the number of cases
Speaker 3: argued and one before the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's stunning. But what were some of his
Speaker 1: biggest wins. Well, his first Supreme Court victory was a
Speaker 1: pretty big one. So this was a nineteen forty case.
Speaker 1: It was called Chambers versus Florida, and it dealt with
Speaker 1: these four black men who had confessed to a murder
Speaker 1: earlier that year and had been sentenced to death for it. However,
Speaker 1: Marshall was able to show that their confessions to the
Speaker 1: crime had been coerced by the police. So the four
Speaker 1: suspects had been held in police custody for a full week,
Speaker 1: never given access to legal counsel, and despite this, the
Speaker 1: men had been questioned individually throughout the week, with as
Speaker 1: many as ten police officers and community members present during
Speaker 1: these interrogations, but again no lawyers were present, and because
Speaker 1: this was all prior to the establishment of Miranda rights,
Speaker 1: no one told the men that they had the right
Speaker 1: to remain silent during these interrogations. So in the end,
Speaker 1: the court ruled that the confessions that had led to
Speaker 1: a conviction had not been given voluntarily, which made them inadmissible.
Speaker 1: So the death sent its ruling was actually overturned. I mean,
Speaker 1: it is wild to think that there was a time
Speaker 1: when those kinds of tactics were actually the norm, you know,
Speaker 1: holding people without charges, denying them counsel, and of course,
Speaker 1: you know, these civil rights violations still happened, but in
Speaker 1: the era we're talking about, it sounds like it was
Speaker 1: more or less acceptable behavior until cases like this were
Speaker 1: brought to trial.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it would actually be another twenty six years after
Speaker 3: the Chambers case before those tactics would finally be outlawed
Speaker 3: by the court.
Speaker 1: And that's when police actually had to start telling suspects
Speaker 1: that they had the right to an attorney and the
Speaker 1: right to remain silent and all that.
Speaker 3: Yep, that was the ruling in the Miranda versus Arizona
Speaker 3: case of nineteen sixty six, which by the way, was
Speaker 3: also a case that Marshall argued, though he was the
Speaker 3: Solicitor General by that point and no longer working for
Speaker 3: the NAACP and Marshall had a slew of other landmark
Speaker 3: victories in the years between Chambers and Miranda, but the
Speaker 3: biggest had to be Brown versus the Board of Education,
Speaker 3: you know, the case that brought down school segregation and
Speaker 3: the whole separate but Equal doctrine. So there's no question
Speaker 3: that was one of the most important cases of the
Speaker 3: twentieth century and probably the most defining moment of Marshall's
Speaker 3: whole career.
Speaker 1: And this was in the early fifties, right, Yes.
Speaker 3: Was nineteen fifty four, so this was really before the
Speaker 3: civil rights movement had gotten into full swing. It was
Speaker 3: a year before Rosa Park's bus ride, three years before
Speaker 3: the Civil Rights Act of nineteen fifty seven, and so
Speaker 3: the Brown case was kind of a precursor to all
Speaker 3: of that.
Speaker 2: And it may have taken a while for.
Speaker 3: The positive ruling to be fully enforced, but right from
Speaker 3: the outset, it definitely helped kick off the movement and
Speaker 3: kind of pave the way for more civil rights victories
Speaker 3: to come.
Speaker 1: So, I know the main takeaways from the Brown case
Speaker 1: have been covered pretty well by now, but could you
Speaker 1: maybe run through the basics just for certainly for me
Speaker 1: before anyone else who might have forgotten.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 3: So basically Marshall was representing a group of black parents
Speaker 3: whose children had been forced to attend all black schools.
Speaker 3: And this was in Topeka, Kansas, you might remember. And
Speaker 3: of course this was a case that was near Marshall's
Speaker 3: heart because this was something he had experienced himself, first
Speaker 3: in high school and then of course again in college.
Speaker 3: So in the end, Marshall argued that separate educational facilities
Speaker 3: are inherently unequal and therefore unconstitutional, and the Supreme Court
Speaker 3: agreed with him unanimously actually, So to be clear that
Speaker 3: positive ruling was never guaranteed given the political climate of
Speaker 3: the era, particularly in the South, you know, where Jim
Speaker 3: Crow laws were still very much in effect, but it
Speaker 3: helped that Marshall was so forceful and so clear when
Speaker 3: exposing the hypocrisies of the current laws in court. So,
Speaker 3: for example, there was one point during the Brown Arguments
Speaker 3: when the Attorney General of Virginia complained that bringing the
Speaker 3: case before the court was an assault by the NAACP
Speaker 3: on the quote cherished heritage of segregation.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it gets even worse when you hear how
Speaker 3: the Attorney General phrased all this. He said that the
Speaker 3: NAACP was trying to quote, press this crown of thorns
Speaker 3: upon our brow and hold the hemlock to our lips.
Speaker 3: It's just so bizarre, which I guess is a dual reference,
Speaker 3: likening the fall of segregation to both the crucifixion of
Speaker 3: Christ and the death of Socrates. I'm not really interesting,
Speaker 3: but just like you said, it is definitely messy and weird. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and you know you'll actually like Marshall's response to this.
Speaker 3: So he told the court, you have heard references to
Speaker 3: one state's greatest and most cherished heritage, and when you
Speaker 3: look for it, you find that greatest and most cherished
Speaker 3: heritage is to segregate colored people.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just signing to me that they voted
Speaker 1: unanimously right with him. It's crazy. But I do want
Speaker 1: to go back to something you mentioned a little earlier.
Speaker 1: You said, Marshall became the Solicitor General in the.
Speaker 3: Sixties, right, Yeah, So Marshall actually received a couple of
Speaker 3: presidential appointments before finally being called up to the Supreme Court.
Speaker 3: He left the NAACP in the early sixties, and this
Speaker 3: was to serve on the US Court of Appeals and
Speaker 3: that was after being nominated by President Kennedy, and then
Speaker 3: four years later Kennedy's successor, Linda Johnson, he appointed Marshall
Speaker 3: the first black solicitor General in US history, which.
Speaker 1: Is obviously important historically, but I feel like I'd appreciate
Speaker 1: a little bit more if I actually knew what a
Speaker 1: solicitor general did.
Speaker 2: You don't think about this every day. That's fair.
Speaker 3: Well, so, the solicitor General is, as you might expect,
Speaker 3: a legal post, and it's basically the attorney who goes
Speaker 3: before the Supreme Court to argue cases on behalf of
Speaker 3: the federal government. So a lot like what he had
Speaker 3: done for twenty years with the NAACP, but now with
Speaker 3: the federal government as his client.
Speaker 1: So I get what he does now. Was he still
Speaker 1: sticking to arguing civil rights cases once he started working
Speaker 1: for the government or did that all change?
Speaker 2: No, he definitely was.
Speaker 3: And it was during this time on the Court of
Speaker 3: Appeals that Marshall issued over one hundred decisions on civil
Speaker 3: rights battles as well as other hot button issues like
Speaker 3: women's rights, police brutality, and amazingly, none of these hundred
Speaker 3: plus decisions were overturned by the Supreme Court and had
Speaker 3: a similarly strong record during his two years as Solicitor
Speaker 3: General two So he argued nineteen cases before the Supreme
Speaker 3: Court during that stint, and one fourteen of those.
Speaker 1: That is really impressive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 3: And with a track record like that, it wasn't long
Speaker 3: before President Johnson decided that Marshall belonged on the Supreme Court.
Speaker 3: So there were a couple of wrenches in his plan, though,
Speaker 3: and chief among them was that there wasn't actually a
Speaker 3: vacancy to appoint him to.
Speaker 1: So I'm guessing Johnson might have played a little dirty
Speaker 1: and engineered something for him, right, I.
Speaker 2: Need some say that he did, Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 3: The story goes that Johnson decided to engineer a vacancy
Speaker 3: himself by creating a conflict of interest for one of
Speaker 3: the sitting justices, and this was a fellow Democrat named
Speaker 3: Tom Clark. So apparently President Johnson appointed Clark's son as
Speaker 3: Attorney General, which prompted his father to step down, so
Speaker 3: it wouldn't look like nepotism. So it's up for debate
Speaker 3: whether this was done to open the seat to Marshall specifically,
Speaker 3: but he is definitely the one who filled it. And
Speaker 3: there is evidence that Johnson and Marshall liked each other
Speaker 3: and got along pretty well. So according to biographer Jan Williams,
Speaker 3: the two men loved to drink bourbon and tell stories full.
Speaker 1: Of lies and watch soap operas.
Speaker 3: Maybe so, But even with Johnson on his side, it's
Speaker 3: not like Marshall's appointment to the Supreme Court was a
Speaker 3: cake wall.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine. There was a backlash to trying to
Speaker 1: get a black person on the Supreme Court, right.
Speaker 3: Pretty shocking, I know. But all right, well, let's take
Speaker 3: a quick break and then get back into this.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, so third good. Marshall was sworn into the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court in October of nineteen sixty seven, But that
Speaker 1: was only after what it sounds like was this pretty
Speaker 1: grueling confirmation process. It took place over the course of
Speaker 1: a week that summer, and from what I read, Marshall
Speaker 1: underwent more hours of questioning than any Supreme Court nominee
Speaker 1: before him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this was largely because a handful of senators
Speaker 3: from Southern States really did their best to torpedo his nomination.
Speaker 3: To the history of the region has left many of
Speaker 3: these old guard senators with, you know, an axe to
Speaker 3: grind and shutting down. The first potential black SCOTUS member
Speaker 3: definitely fit the bill. So, for instance, Mississippi senator at
Speaker 3: the time was a guy named James Eastland, and according
Speaker 3: to The Atlantic, Eastland was quote a notorious racist whose
Speaker 3: father had famously lynched black people. He himself owned a
Speaker 3: plantation that employed more than one hundred black sharecroppers, and
Speaker 3: his daughter had been crowned Missed Confederacy nineteen fifty six.
Speaker 3: That's a little clue there. Anyway, he was the head
Speaker 3: of the committee for Marshall's nomination.
Speaker 2: It was like a little uphill battle.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, you read a LinkedIn profile like that
Speaker 1: and it feels like a miracle that Marshall got through, right.
Speaker 3: I Mean, he wasn't the only one there with you know,
Speaker 3: you might consider questionable views on race. So Senators from
Speaker 3: Thurman was also on the committee. It's amazing how long
Speaker 3: this guy was in office. And his main contribution was
Speaker 3: to subject Marshall to what basically amounted to a Jim
Speaker 3: Crow a literacy test. He cross examined Marshall, quizzing him
Speaker 3: on all these obscure, ridiculously specific portions of political history.
Speaker 3: So for instance, one question he asked him was to
Speaker 3: name all the members of the Congressional Committee that had
Speaker 3: reviewed the fourteenth.
Speaker 2: Amendment in eighteen sixty six.
Speaker 3: Of course he couldn't answer this, But there's one thing
Speaker 3: nobody could. A little later in the preceding Ted Kennedy
Speaker 3: astrom thurnament, if he could name the committee members from
Speaker 3: eighteen sixty six and guess what you couldn't.
Speaker 2: No, of course he couldn't.
Speaker 3: And there was no reason why a Supreme Court justice
Speaker 3: would need to rattle off random information like that. So
Speaker 3: these Southern senators were drilling Marshall because of the color
Speaker 3: of his skin and because of what he represented, not
Speaker 3: because they had any real serious doubts about his legal
Speaker 3: knowledge or his ability to serve in this position, and
Speaker 3: because the case against Marshall was so flimsy. The Judiciary
Speaker 3: Committee ultimately approved his nomination with a resounding eleven to
Speaker 3: five vote, and then the Senate confirmed him with an
Speaker 3: equally definitive vote of sixty nine to eleven, which honestly
Speaker 3: is a little surprising when you look back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, that's impressive, but it does feel like
Speaker 1: there are a significant amount of Senators who didn't vote
Speaker 1: on it, right, Like, that's only like eighty people who
Speaker 1: voted on his nominations quick mask. Well.
Speaker 3: In the end, President Johnson knew he could never get
Speaker 3: the votes of the Southern Democratic senators who opposed Marshall,
Speaker 3: so rather than trying to sway the unswayable, he instead
Speaker 3: focused on getting them to abstain from voting altogether, rather
Speaker 3: than casting a vote against Marshall. And the lobbying seemed
Speaker 3: to work, as you can tell from these numbers. But
Speaker 3: I do think it's worth noting that even if all
Speaker 3: twenty of those abstentions had voted no on Marshall, he
Speaker 3: still would have had more than enough yeses to get confirmed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and after the harassment and committee, it must have
Speaker 1: been nice to have that kind of validation, right, Like,
Speaker 1: that's a pretty resounding vote in Marshall's favor.
Speaker 2: Oh definitely.
Speaker 3: I mean the hearing had been this speed bump in
Speaker 3: one ended up being a pretty smooth next few years
Speaker 3: for Marshall. He joined a very liberal Supreme Court, which
Speaker 3: obviously lined up very well with Marshall's own political views.
Speaker 1: So I am curious about this, Like, what would you
Speaker 1: say those views were? Broadly speaking? Like his job was
Speaker 1: obviously to interpret the Constitution. So what was his take
Speaker 1: on it?
Speaker 3: I mean, it's hard to say definitively, but from what
Speaker 3: I've read about his rulings and from people who work
Speaker 3: closely with him, it sounds like Marshall largely viewed the
Speaker 3: Constitution as a means of promoting a kind of equality
Speaker 3: under the law, especially following the Civil War and the
Speaker 3: addition of certain amendments. And I think that viewpoint is
Speaker 3: certainly reflected in the changes to the constitutional law that
Speaker 3: he had advocated for during all his years as both
Speaker 3: an attorney and then later as a judge. And he
Speaker 3: was trying to make the law align more closely with
Speaker 3: the goal of legal equality under the law that he
Speaker 3: saw represented in the Constitution. And actually, I have a
Speaker 3: quote here that's a good example of the kind of
Speaker 3: alignment I'm talking about. This is something Marshall said in
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty eight, which is just a few years before
Speaker 3: his retirement. In ninety one, he said, quote, a child
Speaker 3: born to a black mother in a state like Mississippi
Speaker 3: has exactly the same rights as a white baby be
Speaker 3: born to the wealthiest person in the United States. It's
Speaker 3: not true, but I challenge anyone to say it's not
Speaker 3: a goal worth working.
Speaker 1: For, which is obviously like a powerful way to think
Speaker 1: about it. And it's interesting to think about how people
Speaker 1: interpret Marshall's philosophy. It's kind of this do what you
Speaker 1: think is right and let the law catch up idea.
Speaker 1: And on one hand that puts them in the category
Speaker 1: of activist judges, which some politicians kind of rail against today,
Speaker 1: and on the other hand it sort of lets the
Speaker 1: laws guide the country to a more equitable world. But
Speaker 1: I was thinking a lot about this week how Marshall
Speaker 1: played a pretty unique role in the civil rights movement
Speaker 1: in that regard, Like you think about Martin Luther King
Speaker 1: Junior and Malcolm X and how they sort of share
Speaker 1: the spotlight when people think about the most influential figures
Speaker 1: of that era, and they each tried their own different
Speaker 1: courses of action, right like King was more this I
Speaker 1: have a dream, big unity, big movement, and Malcolm was
Speaker 1: more by any means necessary. But in the background you've
Speaker 1: got Thurgerd. Marshall plugging away with a third course of action,
Speaker 1: not to change society directly, but to actually change the
Speaker 1: laws that dictate the kind of society we live in.
Speaker 3: It actually came across an obituary from Marshall that that said,
Speaker 3: we make movies about Malcolm X. We get a holiday
Speaker 3: to honor doctor Martin Luther King, But every day we
Speaker 3: live the legacy of Justice Thurgood Marshall. Which isn't to
Speaker 3: say that we don't live the legacy of the other
Speaker 3: guys too, But legal precedent can sometimes hold more sway
Speaker 3: in the long term than a speech or a march.
Speaker 3: So I do think we owe a special kind of
Speaker 3: debt to Marshall for, you know, sort of covering the
Speaker 3: bases on that end.
Speaker 2: So why do you.
Speaker 1: Think Marshall doesn't seem to get as much attention these
Speaker 1: days as other civil rights icons. Is it just that
Speaker 1: like courtroom dramas are seen as kind of stuffy or
Speaker 1: dense or academic compared to like speeches and protests.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, you know, I actually think a lot
Speaker 3: of it comes down to how Marshall's career went in
Speaker 3: the years after he joined the Supreme Court. We mentioned
Speaker 3: there had been a liberal majority when Marshall was confirmed
Speaker 3: in the late nineteen sixties, but that changed drastically over
Speaker 3: the course of the seventies and then into the eighties.
Speaker 3: In fact, during Marshall's twenty four years on the court,
Speaker 3: Republican presidents made eight consecutive appointments, which transformed the court
Speaker 3: and filled every spot on the bench but his. So
Speaker 3: that means that in the second half of his tenure,
Speaker 3: Marshall was in the minority and found you know, his
Speaker 3: opinions increasingly overruled. As you might imagine that there wasn't
Speaker 3: an easy transition for somebody whose entire career was built
Speaker 3: on his incredible penchant for winning. Marshall became more and
Speaker 3: more isolated from the rest of the court, you know,
Speaker 3: with his contributions mostly limited to these strongly worded descents
Speaker 3: about his colleagues's rulings.
Speaker 2: But he never gave up.
Speaker 3: Actually, at one point even vowed to remain on the
Speaker 3: court until he was one hundred and ten years old.
Speaker 3: But in the end he became too ill to continue
Speaker 3: serving and had to step down in nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 3: So two years later Marshall passed away at the age
Speaker 3: of eighty four.
Speaker 1: Well, it's fascinating to hear how Marshall got stymied like
Speaker 1: that after finally making it to the Supreme Court. But
Speaker 1: I know his presence on the court alone still had
Speaker 1: this like profound impact on the country and certainly on
Speaker 1: the issues he spent his whole life fighting for. And
Speaker 1: I'm sure just having a black man seated on the
Speaker 1: highest court in the land had to be life changing
Speaker 1: for millions of people and something that must have influenced
Speaker 1: so many kids and what they dreamed was possible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think even if you don't have that personal
Speaker 3: connection with his service, there's still so much to admire
Speaker 3: about Marshall's legacy. So his commitment to changing the system
Speaker 3: from within and you know, being a voice for the
Speaker 3: voiceless is something that should still resonate with all of us.
Speaker 3: In fact, this is going to sound random, but did
Speaker 3: you happen to come across the commencement address that he
Speaker 3: gave at the University of Virginia.
Speaker 2: No, I haven't read that all.
Speaker 3: Right, Well, he gave it to the graduating class of
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy eight and it is worth tracking down. I
Speaker 3: won't read all of it here, but there's this one
Speaker 3: piece of advice that really stuck out to me, and
Speaker 3: it just says, where you see wrong or inequality or injustice,
Speaker 3: speak out, because this is your country. This is your democracy,
Speaker 3: make it, protect it, pass it on.
Speaker 2: I like that.
Speaker 1: So what do you say we leave things there and
Speaker 1: jump straight into the fact off, all.
Speaker 2: Right, we'll here's something kind of random.
Speaker 3: Remember how I mentioned that thirdgood Marshall graduated college with
Speaker 3: the first president of Ghana earlier. So well, it turns
Speaker 3: out that wasn't the only connection Marshall had with the
Speaker 3: emerging nation. In the nineteen fifties, after Marshall made a
Speaker 3: name for himself with the NAACP, the United Nations and
Speaker 3: the United Kingdom asked him to help write the constitutions
Speaker 3: of Ghana and Tanzania, which he of course did, and
Speaker 3: in fact, both of those constitutions are still in use today.
Speaker 2: That is wild.
Speaker 1: But you know what made the UN and in the
Speaker 1: UK think to ask Marshall for help.
Speaker 3: Well, at the time, the regions had just won their
Speaker 3: independence from European rules, so there was some international concern
Speaker 3: about the minority white citizens of the new countries and
Speaker 3: the fact that they might face oppression. And so the
Speaker 3: UN and the UK figured that since Marshall had been
Speaker 3: such an effective champion for minority rights in America, he
Speaker 3: actually might be able to do the same for Ghana
Speaker 3: and Tanzania.
Speaker 2: That's really interesting.
Speaker 1: So here's when I was pretty shocked to learn not
Speaker 1: only was Thurgood Marshall sworn into the Supreme Court by
Speaker 1: a former clansman, it actually happened by Marshall's request. So
Speaker 1: apparently Marshall saw it as a way to kind of
Speaker 1: extend an Olive branch to the South and to the
Speaker 1: Southern senators who had opposed his nomination. And weirdly enough,
Speaker 1: the one time Alabama Clan member was this guy named Hugo.
Speaker 2: Black.
Speaker 1: He was also a Justice of the Supreme Court when
Speaker 1: Marshall was appointed in nineteen sixty seven. So Black had
Speaker 1: been appointed to the Court back in nineteen thirty seven,
Speaker 1: and it was just a few weeks into his term
Speaker 1: that his prior involvement with the Klan came to light.
Speaker 1: So dozens of newspapers called for his resignation, but Black
Speaker 1: stayed on on the court anyway, citing the fact that
Speaker 1: he'd already cut ties with the clan I guess more
Speaker 1: than a decade earlier, and that he had no intention
Speaker 1: of ever joining up again.
Speaker 3: So do you think Black ever really turned over a
Speaker 3: new leaf or was he just distancing himself from the Klan,
Speaker 3: you know, for political reasons.
Speaker 1: It is tough to say for certain either way, but
Speaker 1: the the truth is probably somewhere in between. If you
Speaker 1: look at Black's track record on the court, it certainly
Speaker 1: seems like he changed his mind. He was part of
Speaker 1: that unanimous ruling that struck down in school segregation, and
Speaker 1: he and Marshall actually became pretty chummy while serving together
Speaker 1: until Black's retirement in nineteen seventy one. Of course, anyway
Speaker 1: you look at it, a former klansman swearing in the
Speaker 1: first black Supreme Court justice does say a lot about
Speaker 1: the changing shape of race relations in America at the time,
Speaker 1: and it was this really powerful message to send, and
Speaker 1: Marshall didn't let that opportunity to.
Speaker 3: Go to waste our One thing I don't think we've
Speaker 3: mentioned yet is the nickname Marshall earned for himself during
Speaker 3: his time working for the NAACP. He was known colloquially
Speaker 3: as mister Civil Rights really creative. I want that teach
Speaker 3: makes sense though, and his dedication to the cause certainly
Speaker 3: made him deserving of this title. In fact, Marshall often
Speaker 3: put his own life on the line while fighting for
Speaker 3: these civil rights and it was in nineteen forty six
Speaker 3: that he went to Tennessee to defend a group of
Speaker 3: black men in a pretty racially charged case. Once the
Speaker 3: trial was over, Marshall and his colleagues knew it was
Speaker 3: in their best entries to get out of town as
Speaker 3: fast as possible. Unfortunately, their concern was quickly validated because,
Speaker 3: according to biographer will Haygood, Marshall's group was ambushed on
Speaker 3: the road by locals and Marshall himself was arrested on
Speaker 3: these false charges. Separate from this group, Marshall was then
Speaker 3: placed in a black sheriff's car immediately driven off the
Speaker 3: main road, which, given the circumstances, was pretty omorous, and
Speaker 3: to make the whole thing even more suspicious, Marshall's colleagues
Speaker 3: were instructed not to follow and instead to continue driving
Speaker 3: on their way to Nashville. Luckily, the group knew better.
Speaker 3: They decided to tail the sheriff anyway, and at that
Speaker 3: point the car quickly returned to the main road and
Speaker 3: Marshall was released not long afterward. So, when recounting the
Speaker 3: event years later, Marshall said he would have been lynched
Speaker 3: then and there if not for his colleagues.
Speaker 1: So that is horrifying. Here's one that's a little lighter.
Speaker 1: According to Marshall's second wife, he was a super talented
Speaker 1: home cook and he would often come home in the
Speaker 1: evenings after a long day in the Supreme Court and
Speaker 1: then just whip up these amazing meals for his wife
Speaker 1: and two sons, using every single pot in the kitchen.
Speaker 1: Apparently his specialty dish was chicken and Chitlin's.
Speaker 3: I kind of want this third good Marshall cookbook. You
Speaker 3: know me too, all right. Well, speaking of Marshall's second wife,
Speaker 3: I've actually got a sweet one here about her. She
Speaker 3: was a woman of Philippine descent. Her name was Cecilia Suyat,
Speaker 3: and the way she and Marshall met was a bit
Speaker 3: of a happy accident. Cecilia went to the unemployment office
Speaker 3: in nineteen forty eight she was looking for work, and
Speaker 3: because her skin was on the darker side, the clerk
Speaker 3: assumed she was black and set her up with a
Speaker 3: job as a stenographer for the NAACP's legal team. Cecilia
Speaker 3: later said she was forever grateful for the clerk's mistaken assumption,
Speaker 3: because not only did it open her eyes to the
Speaker 3: race problem of America, It also introduced her to her
Speaker 3: future husband. At first, though Cecilia wasn't sure she and
Speaker 3: Marshall would make a good match, or at least not
Speaker 3: a publicly accepted one. Although she had been born in Hawaii.
Speaker 3: She worried that people would think Marshall was marrying a
Speaker 3: foreigner and then it would have had a negative impact
Speaker 3: on his budding career. But Marshall didn't want any of that.
Speaker 3: When Cecilia raised this concern, Marshall told her plainly, I
Speaker 3: don't care what people think.
Speaker 2: I'm marrying you. And he did.
Speaker 3: But Marshall and Cecilia tied the knot in nineteen fifty five,
Speaker 3: had two sons together, John and Thurgood Junior, and remained
Speaker 3: happily married until Marshall's passing in nineteen ninety three. Oh
Speaker 3: and I'm happy to report Cecilia herself is still going
Speaker 3: strong today at ninety years young.
Speaker 1: I love that it's such a great story, and I
Speaker 1: do think you deserve Today's trophy for it. That does
Speaker 1: it for today's show. If you want to send us back,
Speaker 1: so just say hello. We're at part time genius at
Speaker 1: iHeartMedia dot com. So from Gabe Tristan willem me, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for listening.
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