Lawyers, law students and other fans of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson erupted in cheers and a standing ovation — eagerly snapping far-off, hazy cell phone photographs during the single occasion it was allowed — as she appeared Thursday at an Indianapolis Bar Association luncheon nestled within the Indiana Convention Center.
Guided by moderator and U.S. District Court Judge Jane Magnus-Stinson of Indiana, she covered the personal — giggly tales of meeting her husband of 28 years — and got serious.
“What keeps you up at night?” Magnus-Stinson asked, during a “lightning round” of questioning.
“I would say the state of our democracy,” Brown Jackson confessed.
Role models, turning points and more
Brown Jackson, the first Black female justice in the court’s 236-year-history, always hoped to pursue law.
“My father, who was a public school teacher when I was born, went back to law school when I was three years old, and some of my earliest memories are of sitting at the kitchen table, and he has his law books, and I have my coloring books, and we’re working together,” she told the crowd. “So I had always thought I wanted to be a lawyer. I didn’t know what else you’re supposed to do.”
But it was in learning about Constance Baker Motley, the first Black female federal judge, that she thought: “I could be a judge.” And it was Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman on the Supreme Court, who inspired her to aim even higher.
She spoke to promote “Lovely One,” the memoir she began writing upon her confirmation to the court, with the goal of “pay(ing) tribute to the people and the circumstances that I thought were really most responsible for that success.”
That began with her grandparents, who grew up in Georgia “in the early 1900s, in a time that was really significantly restricted for African Americans.” Neither graduated from formal schools; her grandfather chauffeured white families.
They moved to Florida, and her grandfather drove for a beer company — until he “got fed up with how he was being treated” — and launched a landscaping business. It financed education for his five children, including Brown Jackson’s mother. All were first-generation college students.
Even the timing of her 1970 birth mattered, Brown Jackson told the crowd. It was shortly after the end of Jim Crow Segregation and after the enactment of the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act.
“My parents had grown up in Florida under segregation, having their life opportunities restricted,” she recounted.
“I’m born … and my parents thought, this is our shot. This is our shot to do everything that we didn’t get a chance to do,” she continued. “So our daughter’s going to be in the swimming lessons if there’s swimming lessons; she’s going to do the piano lessons if there’s piano lessons.”
Brown Jackson later attended Harvard University, where, Magnus-Stinson noted, “racism was not a strange experience.” One student hung a large Confederate flag — representing the failed attempt at secession by 11 slave-holding states — from a dormitory window along the prominent Harvard Yard. A bulb illuminated it 24 hours daily.
As a member of the Black Students Association, she led protests against the student, but realized it was taking time from her study and work.
“The very real function of racism is distraction,” she said, citing writer Toni Morrison. “… It was a big turning point in the way that I view my purpose, which is to stay as focused as I can on the work that I’m called to do.”
“Let’s (not) be distracted from the good work that we want to do and the oath that … we took for the people we’re here to serve,” Magnus-Stinson agreed.
Brown Jackson, who is also the first public defender to join the Supreme Court, described how the experience shaped her commitment to communicating with defendants.
“They might not agree with what ultimately happened to them if I sentenced them or whatever, but they weren’t going to be confused about the process,” she said. Treating defendants with respect, she said, was “crucial for their rehabilitation.”
Throughout her remarks, Brown Jackson emphasized the value of speech and debate, clerkships and networking to the rapt audience.
