In addition to Kevin Sessums' comments below, Earl Warren created the University of California system, the state's pioneering community college system, and its freeways. He was the creator of much of what is good about California today, while Ronald Reagan, a former California governor, tried reverse Warren's work.
Warren was a Republican three-term governor of California who was the VP candidate on Thomas Dewey's ticket in 1948 and wanted to run for president in 1952 until Eisenhower entered the race and promised him the first opening on the Supreme Court. Warren was seated on a court that was averse to civil rights or limiting the now sacred right-wing belief in states' rights. The present day radical right only believes in states' rights if a state agrees with its radical right-wing agenda and if it doesn't then they look to their radical right-wing hypocritical brethren placed throughout the judiciary to rectify such left-leaning laws.
Warren used his considerable political skills to sway the court to a series of historic and sweeping civil rights decisions that angered the southern states and Mississippians in particular. I grew up thinking "Earl Warren" was a traitor and a skunk. He was one of the most hated public figures of my youth in Mississippi. It wasn't until I was old enough to think for myself that I he became a historic hero of mine.
It speaks volumes that Earl Warren was once one of the most popular Republicans in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s and how radically to the right fringes that party has swung since his time on the Supreme Court. The GOP is now run by the political progeny of those who wanted to impeach Earl Warren in the past. From Earl Warren to John Roberts. That is an example of the arc of the moral universe being long, indeed, but it most decidedly, in this case, did not bend toward justice.
We need more public servants like Warren.
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