Today in History, October 2nd
On October 2, 1967, Thurgood Marshall was sworn in as the first Black Supreme Court justice. Plus the Battle of Gonzales and Peanuts' debut.
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October 2 is best known for 1967, when Thurgood Marshall was sworn in as the first Black justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. The date also saw the first shots of the Texas Revolution in 1835 and the debut of the Peanuts comic strip in 1950.
The big story: Thurgood Marshall joins the Supreme Court (1967)
Thurgood Marshall knew the inside of the Supreme Court long before he got a seat on it. Turned away from the University of Maryland’s law school because he was Black, he went to Howard University instead, finished first in his class in 1933 and joined the NAACP’s legal team. As its chief counsel from 1938 to 1961, he built the courtroom strategy that dismantled legal segregation, argued more than a dozen cases before the justices and won nearly all of them, including Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. President John F. Kennedy put him on a federal appeals court, and President Lyndon Johnson made him solicitor general in 1965. In June 1967 Johnson nominated him to replace the retiring Justice Tom Clark, and after a heated debate the Senate confirmed him 69 to 11. On October 2, 1967, as the court opened its term, Chief Justice Earl Warren swore him in. Marshall served 24 years, pressing against race and sex discrimination and opposing the death penalty, and retired in 1991.
More events on October 2
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1780 | British Major John André was hanged as a spy at Tappan, New York, for his role in Benedict Arnold’s treason. |
| 1835 | The first shots of the Texas Revolution were fired at the Battle of Gonzales. |
| 1836 | Charles Darwin got back to England after five years aboard HMS Beagle, the voyage that fed his theory of natural selection. |
| 1919 | President Woodrow Wilson suffered a major stroke after cutting short his national tour for the League of Nations. |
| 1941 | Germany launched Operation Typhoon, its drive on Moscow. |
| 1944 | The Warsaw Uprising ended as the surviving Polish fighters surrendered to German forces. |
| 1950 | Charles M. Schulz’s comic strip Peanuts debuted in seven U.S. newspapers. |
| 1958 | Guinea declared independence from France, with Sékou Touré as its first leader. |
| 1959 | Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone premiered on CBS. |
| 2016 | Broadcaster Vin Scully called his final Los Angeles Dodgers game, closing a career of nearly 67 years. |
| 2020 | President Donald Trump announced that he and the first lady had tested positive for COVID-19. |
Born on October 2
- 1869: Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi, leader of India’s independence movement and champion of nonviolent protest, born in Porbandar, India.
- 1879: Wallace Stevens, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, born in Reading, Pennsylvania.
- 1890: Groucho Marx, comedian of the Marx Brothers and host of You Bet Your Life, born in New York City.
Sources
- Thurgood Marshall sworn in, History.com
- This Day in History: October 2, History.com
- On This Day: October 2, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Mahatma Gandhi, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Wallace Stevens, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Groucho Marx, Encyclopaedia Britannica
