"Thurgood Marshall was sworn in as the nation’s first African American Supreme Court Associate Justice on October 2, 1967. A 1969 oral history interview with Justice Marshall conducted for the LBJ Presidential Library by T.H. Baker, who headed the LBJ oral history program. Also, a call between President Johnson and Thurgood Marshall when he was the U.S. Solicitor General. Harvard Law School Professor Mark Tushnet, who clerked for Justice Marshall and whose books include: “Making Civil Rights Law: Thurgood Marshall” and the “Supreme Court, 1956-1961” talked about working for Justice Marshall. "
Today in 1967, Thurgood Marshall was sworn into the US Supreme Court.
"Early Sunday morning, August 22, 1971, then-FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and Nixon Attorney General John Mitchell announced that 20 antiwar activists had been arrested the previous night attempting to break in and vandalize a Camden, New Jersey draft board office. Five days later, eight more plotters were indicted. Charged with conspiracy to remove and destroy files from draft, FBI and Army intelligence offices, destruction of government property and interfering with the Selective Service system, members of the "Camden 28" faced up to 47 years in federal prison. Who were these dangerous radicals that America's premier law enforcement agency so proudly took down? They included four Catholic priests, a Lutheran minister and 23 members of the "Catholic Left."
"What happened in the courtroom after the arrests, however, may be the most astounding thing recounted by the film. In a trial that lasted 63 days, the plotters proclaimed their guilt. "I ripped up those [draft] files with my hands," declared the Rev. Peter D. Fordi, adding, "They were the instruments of destruction." In the best tradition of civil disobedience, and fully expecting to pay for their stand, the Camden activists asked the jury to "nullify the laws" against breaking and entering in this case, and to acquit them because citizens had a right to stop an "illegal and immoral" war. They also asked the jury to acquit them on the grounds that the raid would not have taken place without the help of an admitted FBI double-agent."
"After three days of deliberations, a jury of seven women and five men returned a verdict of not guilty on all charges. According to The New York Times, "the defendants . . . and 200 supporters . . . burst into cheers, wept, hugged one another and sang a chorus of 'Amazing Grace'," a moment reenacted with gusto at the reunion. The acquittals represented the first legal victory for the antiwar movement in five years of such draft board actions and prosecutions. The jury's verdict moved Supreme Court Justice William Brennan to call the proceeding "one of the great trials of the 20th century."
"The Plymouth Mail robbery, or what the press dubbed "The Great Plymouth Mail Truck Robbery" was, at the time of its occurrence, the largest cash heist of all time. On August 14, 1962, two gunmen stopped a U.S. Mail truck that was delivering $1.5 million in small bills from Cape Cod to the Federal Reserve Bank in Boston, Massachusetts. The hijacking occurred on Route 3 in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The two robbers, dressed as police officers and brandishing submachine guns, tied up the driver of the truck and the guard and drove the truck themselves to places unknown, where the money was dropped off in several places. The truck and its two tied-up occupants were abandoned in Randolph, Massachusettsalongside Route 128."
"In accordance with his statement of resignation the previous evening, Richard M. Nixon officially ends his term as the 37th president of the United States at noon. Before departing with his family in a helicopter from the White House lawn, he smiled farewell and enigmatically raised his arms in a victory or peace salute. The helicopter door was then closed, and the Nixon family began their journey home to San Clemente, California. Richard Nixon was the first U.S. president to resign from office."
"Minutes later, Vice President Gerald R. Ford was sworn in as the 38th president of the United States in the East Room of the White House. After taking the oath of office, President Ford spoke to the nation in a television address, declaring, “My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.”
"Ford, the first president who came to the office through appointment rather than election, had replaced Spiro Agnew as vice president only eight months before. In a political scandal independent of the Nixon administration’s wrongdoings in the Watergate affair, Agnew had been forced to resign in disgrace after he was charged with income tax evasion and political corruption. In September 1974, Ford pardoned Nixon for any crimes he may have committed while in office, explaining that he wanted to end the national divisions created by the Watergate scandal."