'A Neg-What?'!
Editor’s Note: This article previously appeared in a different format as part of The Atlantic’s Notes section, retired in 2021.
On this day in 1967, the U.S. Senate confirmed legendary NAACP lawyer Thurgood Marshall's appointment to a seat on the Supreme Court. As the nation’s first black justice, Marshall brought the American judiciary closer to resembling the American people it served. This change was easier for some members of the legal community to absorb than for others, to say the least.
Marshall's tenure on the Court has spawned endless anecdotes, but one that sticks out for me is a little-known exchange between Marshall and North in 1975. I first discovered it in Evan Mandery’s indispensable book on the campaign to abolish the death penalty in the early 1970s, . (A transcript of isn’t available online, so I've relied on Mandery’s recitation below.)
