Thurgood Marshall was nominated to serve as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States by U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson on June 13, 1967 to fill the seat being vacated by Tom C. Clark.

[2] Fearing that his son's appointment would create substantial conflicts of interest for him, the elder Clark announced his resignation from the Court.

[4] Johnson, who had long desired to solidify his legacy in regards to civil rights by nominating a non-white justice,[4][5] believed that the choice of a nominee to fill the ensuing vacancy "was as easy as it was obvious", according to the scholar Henry J.

Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Lorna E. Lockwood was the main contender if he were to opt for a woman nominee.

Another woman discussed was a California judge, Shirley Hufstedler, whom Johnson later placed on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Marshall had established a strong reputation as a litigator of civil rights cases for the NAACP as their chief counsel from 1948 until 1961, including landmark cases such as Brown v. Board of Education, before becoming a federal judge and then solicitor general of the United States (a position that he still held at the time he was nominated to the Supreme Court).

[13] The Judiciary Committee moved much faster on his nomination to be solicitor general, positively reporting and forwarding it to the full Senate in less than a month's time.

[3] Johnson announced the nomination in the White House Rose Garden on June 13, 1967, declaring that Marshall "deserves the appointment ...

Attorney General Clark praised Marshall as bringing, "a wealth of legal experience rarely equalled in the history of the Court.

[9][3][17] James Eastland, Sam Ervin, John L. McClellan, Herman Talmadge, and Strom Thurmond were all in opposition to the nomination.

[17] For instance, in what Time characterized as a "Yahoo-type hazing", Thurmond asked Marshall over sixty questions about various minor aspects of the history of certain constitutional provisions.

[3] In presenting his own minority view, Senator Ervin wrote, "it is clearly a disservice to the Constitution and the country to appoint a judicial activist to the Supreme Court at any time.

[9] Afterwards, on September 1, 1967 Justice Hugo Black privately administered the constitutional oath to Marshall, allowing him to be placed on the Supreme Court's payroll.

[16] Byrd, a segregationist who later would recant those views,[17] claimed to oppose the nomination because Marshall's appointment would bring about a "built-in activist majority" on the court in regards to issues such as criminal rights, which he held would be detrimental.

[17] In his hour and twenty-minute speech against the nomination on the Senate Floor, Senator Sam Ervin declared, Judge Marshall is, by practice and philosophy, a constitutional iconoclast, and his elevation to the Supreme Court at this juncture in our history would make it virtually certain that for years to come, if not forever, the American people will be ruled by the arbitrary notions of the Supreme Court justices rather than by the precepts of the Constitution.

Some critics of the liberal civil rights policies that Marshall had advanced in his work with the NAACP nevertheless voted for the nomination, including Republican John Tower and Democrat J. William Fulbright.