Review: Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination That Changed America

Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination That Changed America by Wil Haygood
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a really good look at the confirmation process of Thurgood Marshall. Haygood details the players that helped and hindered Marshall's confirmation. It was clear that LBJ was Marshall's champion and may have been the sole reason Marshall made it to the high court. There were those that did their best to keep Marshall from donning the big black robe. Dixiecrat senators McClellan, Ervin, and Thurmond, spearheaded by Senator James Eastland did their best to break down Marshall during the confirmation hearings and show him as unqualified. Eastland would postpone the hearings or flat out not show up to go out on a campaign against Marshall across the south. LBJ did his own campaigning to make sure the needed votes were there and convince dissenters not to vote. Marshall certainly was qualified for the Supreme Court on his own merits, but he needed that push and support from LBJ to become the first African American Solicitor General and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, in an age of segregation and the fight for civil rights.

This is one of those books that reads like a novel. Very enjoyable. Haygood does go off on a few tangents and does not always come full circle after introducing various players in Marshall's life or cases that he might have argued. They didn't seem to have a relevance to his actual confirmation, however, the information was interesting.

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