With the confirmation hearing for U.S. Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito, Jr. coming to a close this week, it’s time to dust off a good Supreme Court trivia question that you can use to stump your colleagues: How many U.S. Supreme Court Justices have hailed from Texas?
The answer is one — Tom Clark, who President Truman appointed in 1949. Justice Clark served until 1967 when fellow Texan Lyndon Johnson engineered Clark’s resignation so that Johnson could appoint the first black Justice — Thurgood Marshall — to the Supreme Court. How did President Johnson induce Justice Clark to resign? By appointing Clark’s son Ramsey as Attorney General of the United States. Johnson really could get things done, eh?
With the Supreme Court in the news, the University of Texas’ fine Utopia site has made Justice Clark’s personal papers available on the Web. The materials “contain a comprehensive record of Justice Clark’s activities as a U.S. Supreme Court Justice, public servant, and advocate for improved judicial administration. . . [f]rom . . . 1949 until his death in 1977.” The site focuses on court documents relating to Judge Clark’s work in the areas of desegregation, school prayer, voting rights, civil rights, and much more.
Hat tip to the Librarians Internet Index via ZiefBrief for the link to Justice Clark’s papers.

Muriel Dobbin’s Washington Times review of Nate Blakeslee’s new book on the Tulia scandal — Tulia: Race, Cocaine, and Corruption in a Small Texas Town (PublicAffairs 2005) — says it all about the enduring legacy of racism in American society:

It was only six years ago that it happened, but it could have been 60. Decades after the gains of the civil rights movement in the battle against discrimination, this book warns that it isn’t over. This is the disturbing chronicle of what happened in the bleak little west Texas town of Tulia when a rogue cop ran amok and organized a drug sweep that put a substantial number of the black population in jail for allegedly dealing powdered cocaine. . .
This book is dark evidence of the kind of racism that still lingers in America, from corrupt cops and judges to an indifference to justice most commonly associated with the deep south of the 1930s. . . .
Almost as difficult to believe as the Tulia sting operation are the dimensions of the legal battle it took to reverse the conviction of the Tulia defendants and disclose that [rogue police officer Tom] Coleman had a record of leaving jobs with unpaid debts and had a reputation as a racist and pathological liar obsessed with guns. Mr. Blakeslee’s meticulous account of court proceedings and legal actions underscores the racist roots as well as the inadequacies of justice on the Texas panhandle.

Read the entire review. Tulia reminds us that the stubborn prejudice noted earlier here remains woven tightly within the fabric of American life. When the dark passions of racism are combined with the power of the state, the damage to lives, justice and the rule of law is truly foreboding.