On June 13, 1967, Thurgood Marshall, a U.S. Court of Appeals Judge, was appointed by President Lyndon Johnson to fill a vacant seat on the Supreme Court. After a heated debate, the Senate confirmed Marshall’s nomination by a vote of 69 to 11. When he was sworn in, he became the first African American to sit on America’s highest court. Early in his career, he was a lawyer for the NAACP and often argued segregation and discrimination cases before the Supreme Court.
