Washington (CNN)-- "I'm going to appoint Thurgood Marshall to the (Supreme) Court." This monumental, unexpected bombshell from President Lyndon Johnson -- spoken in private in the summer of 1965 ...

On June 13, 1967, Johnson named Thurgood Marshall, the great-grandson of a slave, to sit on the highest court in the land...Visions of a Great Society swallowed up in the quagmire of Vietnam ...