The Eve of Destruction: How 1965 Transformed America by Patterson James T

Author:Patterson, James T. [Patterson, James T.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780465033485
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2012-11-27T05:00:00+00:00

THE POLITICAL SCENE DURING JUNE AND JULY 1965, LARGELY unaffected by cultural developments, continued to reveal the contagious power of rights-oriented political causes as well as LBJ’s impatient but effective management of domestic objectives. Johnson worked hard during this time to advance the interests of black Americans. On June 2, the Senate confirmed his nomination of Patricia Harris, a civil rights activist, attorney, and Howard University law professor, as America’s first black ambassador (to Luxembourg). A few weeks later, LBJ made a bolder move, picking Thurgood Marshall, the renowned litigator who had led the fight against mandated school segregation, to be the first African American solicitor general of the United States. The Senate, after overcoming delaying tactics from Southerners, confirmed Marshall’s appointment in early August, thereby positioning him to become the nation’s first black Supreme Court justice in 1967.

The Court, a stalwart supporter of liberal goals under Chief Justice Earl Warren since the mid-1950s, also continued to establish the extension of rights. In April, it had declared that earlier convictions of 1961 Freedom Riders could not stand.21 And on June 7, the last day of its session, it announced its decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, which overturned an 1879 Connecticut law that had forbidden the use, even by married couples, of contraception. Though unenforced (and unenforceable), the statute was one of a number of similar state laws that had long dismayed advocates of contraceptive rights.

In announcing the decision, Justice William Douglas stressed that married couples must have the right to make their own decisions concerning birth control. “Would we allow the police to search the sacred precincts of marital bedrooms for telltale signs of the use of contraceptives?” he asked. “The very idea is repulsive to the notions of privacy surrounding the marital relationship.” Conceding that the Constitution offered no guidance on the subject, he declared that “specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras”—shadows—“formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance.” Various of these guarantees, he said, created “zones of privacy.” Citing the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments, Douglas maintained that there was a constitutional “right to privacy” that the Connecticut law violated.22

Two of Douglas’s fellow justices, Potter Stewart and Hugo Black, dissented. Stewart, while observing that Connecticut’s law was “uncommonly silly,” could discover no constitutional basis for ruling against it. Black, who prided himself on his defense of the First Amendment, which among other things guarantees the right of peaceable assembly, commented, “the right of a husband and wife to assemble in bed is a new right for me.” Six of Douglas’s colleagues, however, supported him, citing varying constitutional provisions in the course of doing so. By a vote of 7 to 2, the Connecticut law was overturned.

Like Black and Stewart, critics of the ruling have since insisted that Douglas and his defenders, seeking rationales to justify their preconceived conclusions, had read their personal preferences into the Constitution. The critics were particularly dubious about the “penumbras” and “emanations” Douglas discovered in the nation’s founding document.

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