On September 2, 1967, Chief Justice Earl Warren swore
in Thurgood Marshall, the first Black justice of the U.S.
Supreme Court.

As chief counsel for the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in the 1940s 
and ’50s, Marshall was the architect and executor of
legal strategy that ended the era of official racial
segregation 

                                       
                                          Thurgood Marshall (1908 – 1993)       
      
                                                                                                                                      

Muhammad Ali, the reigning world heavyweight boxing champion, entered the combative ring of politics and culture by refusing to
serve in the United States military at the height of the Vietnam
War on this day in 1967.

"I ain’t got no quarrel with those Vietcong," Ali famously said the
year before, the exact quote the source of some dispute, in a
battle that made it all the way to the United States Supreme Court. 

He later wrote, "I refuse to be inducted into the Armed Forces
of the United States because I claim to be exempt as a minister
of the religion of Islam."

ROSS SIMPSON

John Adam Belushi (January 24, 1949 – March 5, 1982)

Comedian, actor, and musician John Belushi was one
of the seven original cast members of the NBC sketch
comedy show Saturday Night Live (SNL) that premiered
October 11, 1975.

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Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that
established a woman’s legal right to an abortion, was
decided on January 22, 1973. The Court ruled, in a 7-2
decision, that a woman’s right to choose an abortion
was protected by the privacy rights guaranteed by the
Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The
legal precedent for the decision was rooted in the 1965
case of Griswold v. Connecticut, which established the
right to privacy involving medical procedures.

Members of the U.S. Supreme Court as seen in 1973.

MIKE GRACIA

Singer John J. (Cougar) Mellencamp is 71 years old today. 

He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008, followed by an induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame
in 2018.