Barrier Breakers: From Thurgood Marshall to Ketanji Brown-Jackson
The Monday Musings!
This week, U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson will begin her Senate confirmation hearings to replace outgoing Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen Breyer on the bench; if confirmed, Brown-Jackson would become the first Black woman to serve on the nation's highest court.
The Honorable Ketanji Brown-Jackson
There was a time not so long ago when a jurist with Brown-Jackson's immense qualifications would sail through confirmation hearings and win near unanimous support in the Senate chamber. But with the nation as polarized as it has ever been politically, and with memories of controversial hearings involving (Ronald) Reagan appointee Robert Bork in 1987, (George H.W.) Bush appointee Clarence Thomas in 1991, and (Donald) Trump appointee Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, the reality is that conservatives have chosen to ignore the fact that those three nominees were hotly contested not due to their “qualifications” or “judicial philosophies,” but to paraphrase the late R&B star Bobby Womack, because "skeletons came out of the closet, and chased them all around the room."
Clockwise: Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas, and Brett Kavanaugh's hearings were the most intense of the past 35 years. Bork was the only one not confirmed, losing by a 42-58 margin.
Indeed, credible evidence of racism (Bork), rape (Kavanaugh), and sexual harassment (Thomas) surely were ripe for deep examination by sitting senators and in the end, while Bork was not confirmed, Thomas and Kavanaugh were and, due to their claims of having being treated unfairly, every single Republican Senator now believes it to be their charges to keep to create drama as to whether they will vote to confirm Democratic nominees for the Supreme Court.
But such acrimony was not always the case, as evidenced by the very first minority nominated to the Supreme Court—former NAACP super lawyer Thurgood Marshall.
Thurgood Marshall (l) with President Lyndon B. Johnson in the Oval Office circa 1967.
By the time Marshall was nominated in 1967, he was already a legend for having dismantled Jim Crow segregation in state and federal courts across America, including his stint as lead counsel in 1954's Brown vs. Board of Education decision.
That Marshall was appointed by then President Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) is but one more fascinating cog in the living paradox that Johnson was in that he was a southerner who used virulently racist rhetoric on the regular—but whose personal secretary and chauffeur were both Black.
On Marshall's appointment to the Supreme Court, LBJ's biographer Robert Dallek notes that the former president said that he wanted to appoint the famous Marshall instead of a "lesser known Black judge" because, "when I appoint a n*gger to the bench, I want everyone to know he is a n*gger."
LBJ's Black chauffeur, Robert Parker, writes in his memoirs, Capitol Hill in Black and White, that the then president once asked him whether he'd prefer to be referred to by his first name rather than 'boy,' 'n*gger' or 'chief.' When Parker said he would prefer being called by his name, LBJ grew angry and said, 'As long as you are Black, you’re gonna be Black till the day you die, no one’s gonna call you by your goddamn name. So no matter what you are called, n*gger, you just let it roll off your back like water, and you’ll make it. Just pretend you’re a goddamn piece of furniture.'"
Whew...Suffice it to say that I would have had a hard time working for LBJ…
Paradox: LBJ (shaking MLK's hand) used racist rhetoric on the regular, but still signed the Civil Rights, Voting Rights, and Fair Housing Acts that eliminated Jim Crow.
Biographer Dallek also noted that LBJ often referred to the Civil Rights Act of 1957 as "the N*gger Bill," and despite later signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 into law, he never lost his penchant for using racial slurs to refer to Blacks, including "those n*gger preachers," as he referred to Dr. Martin Luther King, Rev. Ralph Abernathy, and Rev. Andrew Young.
Knowing this history, and also further knowing that despite the overtly racist rhetoric and acts during the 1960's, that Marshall was still confirmed by a super-majority vote in the Senate, gives me pause to believe that 55 years after he broke the color barrier on the court, that Judge Ketani Brown Jackson will successfully navigate the faux outrage that modern "Racial Rumpelstiltskins" like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex), Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex) will spew towards her during this week's hearings.
Thurgood Marshall was confirmed by a 69-11 vote. The 11 “nay” votes came from the above listed racist Southern Dixiecrats and Republican Strom Thurmond.
Thus, the Hobbservation Point's prayers go with the Honorable Ketanji Brown-Jackson, and we invite our readers to stay tuned this week to the latest developments!
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