On this day in 1967, Thurgood Marshall became the first African American to serve as a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
In a speech in Hawaii in 1987, commemorating the bicentennial celebration of the US Constitution, Justice Marshall spoke of his rejection of the view espoused by his more conservative colleagues that the Constitution should be interpreted according to the founders' original understanding and intent:
I do not believe that the meaning of the Constitution was forever 'fixed' at the Philadelphia Convention. Nor do I find the wisdom, foresight, and sense of justice exhibited by the framers particularly profound. To the contrary, the government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and momentous social transformation to attain the system of constitutional government, and its respect for the individual freedoms and human rights, that we hold as fundamental today ... 'We the People' no longer enslave, but the credit does not belong to the framers. It belongs to those who refused to acquiesce in outdated notions of 'liberty', 'justice', and 'equality', and who strived to better them ... I plan to celebrate the bicentennial of the Constitution as a living document, including the Bill of Rights and the other amendments protecting individual freedoms and human rights.
