‘Showdown’ captures riveting story of Thurgood Marshall’s Supreme Court nomination

Lyndon B. Johnson became the president of the United States after John F. Kennedy’s assassination, a fact that only heightens the accomplishments of his tenure.

With the nation mired in grief over Kennedy and angry over the quagmire of Vietnam, Johnson’s attention turned toward a third matter — the problem of racism and segregation.

He wanted change, change in a big thunderclap of barriers dropping and ceilings being shattered; he wanted to appoint the first black chief justice to the U.S. Supreme Court.

To say that this was no easy task would be the definition of an understatement, and the way it came together provides the backbone for Wil Haygood’s “Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination that Changed America.”

Johnson knew that if his ambition had any hopes of being realized, he would need to choose an exceptional litigator. In that respect, Thurgood Marshall was the man who met all the qualifications.

Long before Johnson had even run for (and lost) a Senate seat, Marshall was at work, forming the permanent legal arm of the NAACP and barnstorming across the country, amassing a long list of landmark court victories toward shifting the laws of segregation.

Not least of these was Brown v. Board of Education, ordering desegregation in the nation’s schools. Years later, the effects of these courtroom victories can be felt, but at the time they were more symbolic than anything else — the laws would be ignored on the federal level and subverted at the state level.

Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the South wanted his head on a pike. Johnson knew that a bolder move was needed, a push forward for the national conversation about race — not just a change in the law, but a change in the face of the law and in the makeup of the highest court in the land.

Johnson’s first court nominee, Abe Fortas, had made a name for himself opposing the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II and had defended victims of McCarthyism. In that sense, Marshall would not have been a surprising next pick for Johnson. That would be about the only sense in which it wasn’t a surprise.

Southern lawmakers at every level of government sounded the alarm when Johnson’s nomination was announced, not least of all Sen. John McClellan of Arkansas and Sen. James Eastland of Mississippi.

Haygood provides ample background on all the aspects of the nomination: former groundbreaking court nominations; the maneuvering involved for Johnson to nominate a Supreme Court justice to a bench with no vacancy; the way of life that lead often-rational, occasionally liberal lawmakers to stand against Marshall.

The nomination hearings were contentious and lengthy (though by today’s standards, they would likely be judged as relatively cordial and fair-minded.) Riots in Detroit provided a backdrop to the proceedings — while a city burned, the process dragged on, with opposing senators trying every semantics trick they could muster to shake the nominee.

Even knowing the eventual confirmation of Marshall, Haygood’s telling of the stories makes for riveting reading. One can’t help but marvel at how far our nation has come — and how far we have to go — in delving into the rise of one of our nation’s champions of equality.

As political theater goes, Haygood’s curation here is matchless; it’s not difficult to imagine the tension in the room, reading snippets of the transcripts from the hearings. It’s compelling storytelling with an impact felt even to the present day.

This story was originally published November 7, 2015 at 4:27 AM with the headline "‘Showdown’ captures riveting story of Thurgood Marshall’s Supreme Court nomination."