OK, so, back to the Court:
Pretty interesting little history lesson:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/11/opin ... esson.html
"It’s obvious why the parallel between the battle over Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination and that of Clarence Thomas 27 years earlier grabbed the public’s attention. In both cases, late-breaking allegations threatened but failed to derail the confirmation process, and both nominees defended themselves with impassioned denials of wrongdoing.
But history offers another, older parallel that in its way is even more compelling. The issue was not sex but racism. The bombshell burst not just before a confirmation vote, but just afterward, forcing a newly confirmed Supreme Court justice to take to the airwaves to defend himself against mounting calls for his resignation. I’m referring to the experience of Hugo L. Black, the first Supreme Court nominee of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In the wake of the Kavanaugh confirmation, this nearly forgotten episode is worth resurrecting after 81 years.
Black was a Democratic senator from Alabama, a populist and ardent supporter of the New Deal who had backed the president’s failed plan to add additional justices to the Supreme Court who could outvote the conservatives who were invalidating major New Deal programs. The retirement of one of those conservatives, Willis Van Devanter, gave Roosevelt his first chance to make a dent in the Supreme Court.
Black’s nomination in the summer of 1937 was controversial, not only because it was a sharp stick in the eyes of the president’s many political enemies, but because of Black’s limited judicial experience — he was briefly a police court magistrate — and an education viewed as marginal for a Supreme Court justice. Although a graduate of the University of Alabama Law School, Black had never gone to college."
"Shortly after the president announced the nomination, rumors circulated that as a young lawyer in Alabama, Black had been a member of the Ku Klux Klan. The N.A.A.C.P. asked for an investigation, but a Senate Judiciary subcommittee rammed the nomination through to the full committee after two hours of consideration. One Democratic senator, William Dieterich of Illinois, accused other senators of trying to “besmirch” Black’s reputation. As the historian William E. Leuchtenberg described the scene in a fascinating 1973 article, “Dieterich’s tirade nearly resulted in a fist fight” as another Democratic senator charged at him.
Supreme Court nominees did not ordinarily appear at their confirmation hearings in those days, but Black’s supporters said he had assured them that he had never joined the Klan. The full committee moved the nomination to the Senate floor. Black was confirmed by a vote of 63 to 16, and the new justice and his wife set sail for a European vacation...."
