I’m going to appoint Thurgood Marshall to the (Supreme) Court.”
This monumental, unexpected bombshell from President Lyndon Johnson — spoken in private in the summer of 1965 — set in motion a history-making drama, revealed for the first time in newly public audio tapes.
In secret recordings and transcripts made exclusive to CNN, Johnson laid out a politically crafty plan that was years in the making to groom Marshall as the first African-American on the high court. It was part of a broader White House strategy to implement the president’s civil rights agenda, something he openly hoped would cement his legacy and strengthen the Democrats’ base.
Marshall was unaware of all this when Johnson first called him on July 7, 1965. Marshall, then a federal appeals court judge in New York, had been summoned from lunch. The president, a master persuader, wastes little time making his point:
“I have a rather big problem that I wanted to talk to you about,” he says. “I want you to give it some real thought because it’s something that I have thought about for weeks, and I think that we can’t think of how it affects us personally. We’ve got to think about the world, and our country.”
“Yes, sir,” Marshall replies, the usually verbose judge unable to get many more words in the conversation.
Johnson then makes the pitch: “I want you to be my solicitor general.”
“Wow,” is all Marshall can say, clearly in disbelief.
“I want the top lawyer in the United States representing me before the Supreme Court to be a negro. And be a damn good lawyer that’s done it before. So you have those peculiar qualifications.” He adds, “I want to do this job that [Abraham] Lincoln started, and I want to do it the right way.”
Leaving the security of a lifetime job on the bench for an uncertain political post — where he could be fired at any time — at first concerns Marshall, who asks for a day or two to think about the offer. But minutes later, he is sold. “The answer’s ‘yes.’ ”
‘Do it for the people of the world’
Then the president offers a tantalizing hint of bigger things to come.
“Nobody will ever know I talked to you. If you decide that you can do it, I think you ought to do it for the people of the world. … And if there’s not something better, which I would hope there would be, that you would be more amenable to, there’ll be security for you because I’m going to be here for quite awhile,” he says confidently.
That “something,” as later conversations that Johnson has with top aides reveals, is a Supreme Court appointment. It would come two years later in 1967. The solicitor general spot would be a mere prelude to a bigger stage.
The tapes are being released by the Miller Center at the University of Virginia, which is analyzing and transcribing secret White House tapes from the Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the Richard Nixon years.
Bill Mears, CNN
