The first Black woman nominated to the Supreme Court is likely to face questioning at her Senate hearing that would have been familiar to Thurgood Marshall, the first Black man who served on the high court.
But concerns about crime were inextricably linked to the issue of race, author Wil Haygood wrote in “Showdown,” his account of Marshall's confirmation.
The party still held the reins in the Senate in 1967 when President Lyndon Johnson maneuvered to create a Supreme Court opening and then sought to fill it with a groundbreaking choice.By then, Marshall had been a federal appeals court judge and was serving as solicitor general, Johnson's top Supreme Court lawyer, at the time of his nomination to the court.“They were pretty awful to Marshall. Thurmond in particular kept asking questions that were like trivia questions.
Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., who would later recant his segregationist views, said it would be smart politically for him to support Marshall because Marshall was Black."Yet, I consider it my duty as a senator, under the Constitution, not to let Mr. Marshall’s race influence my decision. Having reached the definite conclusion that were Mr. Marshall white, I would vote against him.