 No African @-@ American candidate was given serious consideration for appointment to the Supreme Court until the election of John F. Kennedy , who weighed the possibility of appointing William H. Hastie of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit . Hastie had been the first African @-@ American elevated to a Court of Appeals when Harry S. Truman had so appointed him in 1949 , and by the time of the Kennedy Administration , it was widely anticipated that Hastie might be appointed to the Supreme Court . That Kennedy gave serious consideration to making this appointment " represented the first time in American history that an African American was an actual contender for the high court " . 
