The Supreme Court records two different oath dates for Thurgood Marshall. On 2 October 1967, the first Black justice took the judicial oath in the courtroom.
Explore all six stories from 2 October.
A date that needs precision
Thurgood Marshall’s arrival at the United States Supreme Court was historic, but shorthand accounts can blur its chronology. The Court’s own account says senior Associate Justice Hugo L. Black administered Marshall’s constitutional oath on 1 September 1967. The clerk administered the judicial oath in the courtroom on 2 October. This story is about that second ceremony. Calling 2 October his only “swearing in” erases a real earlier step in the constitutional process.
From advocate to justice
Before joining the Court, Marshall had argued cases that changed the legal landscape of segregation in the United States, including the litigation culminating in Brown v. Board of Education. He then served as a federal appellate judge and as solicitor general. Those posts matter to the 1967 moment: the first African American justice was an experienced lawyer whose work had already confronted the gap between constitutional promises and people’s lived experience. His appointment opened a seat at the nation’s highest court that had never before been held by a Black person.
The courtroom on 2 October
The Court’s historical note identifies the clerk of the Court as the official who administered the judicial oath in the courtroom on 2 October 1967. The detail is modest but important. It anchors the event in an institutional record and keeps it separate from the constitutional oath a month earlier. A judicial oath commits a justice to administer justice faithfully and impartially; it is part of entering a role that can affect lives far beyond any one ceremony. We do not invent dialogue, attendance or atmosphere that the cited record does not establish.
The image and its date
The portrait accompanying this article was made by White House photographer Yoichi R. Okamoto on 13 June 1967, when Marshall was pictured in the Oval Office. It is not a photograph of the October courtroom. The National Archives identifies the image and date, and the federal-government work is marked public domain. Its use here shows the person at the center of the story without falsely claiming to illustrate the exact oath.
An institutional first with a longer history
Marshall’s appointment did not resolve the injustices he had spent his career fighting. It did change who could take part in the Court’s decisions from the bench. October 2 offers a precise point of entry into a wider history of legal equality, representation and the uneven enforcement of rights. In our account of Nigeria’s independence, another dated institutional milestone similarly opens a longer story rather than concluding it.
Sources and method
The Supreme Court distinguishes the 1 September constitutional oath from the 2 October judicial oath. The June photograph is captioned with its actual date.
