Wednesday · November 11, 2026

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Kennedy names Thurgood Marshall to a federal appeals seat; Southern senators plan to slow-walk it

The Second Circuit nomination sets off an eight-month confirmation fight before Marshall ever hears a case as a sitting judge.

On September 23, 1961, President John F. Kennedy nominated Thurgood Marshall, the NAACP's lead civil rights lawyer, to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, one of the country's most influential appellate benches, covering New York, Vermont, and Connecticut. Southern senators, hostile to Marshall's record fighting segregation, refused to move the nomination through committee. Kennedy gave Marshall a recess appointment that October so he could start work, but the Senate did not confirm him for the seat until September 11, 1962…

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More from September 23

Jones refuses to strike, and takes Serapis by lantern light

Lashed to a bigger, better-armed British frigate, the Bonhomme Richard wins by refusing to let go.

Eisenhower orders troops into Little Rock to open Central High's doors

The same Arkansas Guard Governor Faubus used to bar nine Black students is now ordered to protect them.

Nixon goes on television and refuses to give up the dog

Facing calls to quit the ticket, the senator lays open his bank accounts and says he is keeping Checkers no matter what.

A royal cedula halts Spanish colonizing efforts in Florida, issued the same year Philip II makes Madrid his permanent capital.

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Read the full September 23 edition →Everything that happened on September 23 →

More from Cold War America

A bomb tears through a Birmingham Sunday school; four girls are dead

The blast hit minutes after an anonymous caller warned the church secretary: three minutes.

Yeltsin stops at a Texas supermarket and asks what it costs to feed a family

Twenty minutes at Randalls #30 in Webster leaves the Soviet leader stunned into silence on the flight to Miami.

The law takes hold: America wakes to a Defense Department and a new spy agency

One day after Forrestal's confirmation, the government's wartime agencies formally give way to a unified national security machine.

A van bomb tears into the US embassy annex at Aukar, killing 23

Guards' gunfire kept the van from reaching the building; it still detonated close enough to rip off the front wall.

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