June 13: Thurgood Marshall

On this date in History .... June 13, 1967:

Lyndon Johnson nominated Thurgood Marshall for the U.S. Supreme Court.  

Marshall was confirmed by Congress 69-11 and sworn in on August 30, making him the first African-American to sit on the Supreme Court. 

The great-grandson of slaves, he became an attorney and argued cases before the Supreme Court, winning 29 of them, including the ground breaking Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. 

He served 24 years on the Court.

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January 22: LBJ Dies

On this date in History .... 1973:

Former President Lyndon Baines Johnson dies at the age of 64. 

Johnson’s pre-political career was that of a high school teacher of debate and public policy. He was the first president to appoint an African-American, Thurgood Marshall, to the Supreme Court. 

Johnson had wanted to “carve out a legacy as the creator of a Great Society” but had to live with the disappointment that his social programs were overshadowed by his escalation of the Vietnam War. 

Johnson had always said the “…when the Great Society dies, I’ll die, too.” As he watched Nixon’s second inaugural, on Jan 20^th, he heard many of his social programs being dismantled.  The next day, he watched Nixon announce the cease fire in Vietnam, something that Johnson had been unable to achieve.  The following day, Johnson died of a heart attack.