‘Persevere:’ Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson on her memoir 

PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE

United States Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson spoke in Charlotte Thursday as part of a national tour in support of her 2024 memoir "Lovely One."

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson passed along the inspiration that helped her reach the U.S. Supreme Court. 

A year after publication of her memoir, “Lovely One,” Brown Jackson sat down for a public conversation with former Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt at the Carolina Theatre on Thursday.

Brown Jackson became the first Black woman sworn in to the court in 2022 and is one of three Black justices in its 233-year history. Her memoir, which is the translation of her name, discusses the weight of her position.

Reading from the preface, Brown Jackson spoke of her swearing in as the culmination of her “ancestors’ wildest dreams,” herself standing “on the threshold of history.” 

Brown-Jackson was born in 1970 to parents who were alumni of historically Black universities – her mother Tuskegee University in Alabama and her father North Carolina Central University. She spoke of her “sheer gratitude” to “all who came before me and opened the door for me to walk through,” because “no one achieves the highest of heights alone.” 

Having lived through the Civil Rights Movement and passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 Brown Jackson’s parents encouraged her to “fully participate in society,” an opportunity they didn’t always have. 

“If there were swim lessons, I was in them. If there were piano lessons, I was in them,” Brown Jackson said, adding she knew her parents “could not rely on the greater society” to instill in her the value of her own intelligence. As a child, she’d sit at the kitchen table with coloring books across from her father, who had his law books, and they’d “work together.”

Brown Jackson’s parents’ encouragement to achieve academically gave her the confidence to follow her dreams. In high school, in Miami, Florida, Brown-Jackson sharpened her skills as an excellent public speaker, winning the speech and debate championship at Harvard University, where she eventually set her sights for college. In her admissions interview, Brown Jackson said it would help her achieve her goal of becoming the first Black woman Supreme Court justice. 

Her time at predominantly white Harvard was not always easy. One day, while walking across campus questioning if she’d made the right choice, a Black woman walking toward her leaned toward close and said one word: “persevere.” 

In her one-hour conversation with Gantt, Brown Jackson’s tone was lighthearted and candid; the audience, many of them Black women, could have been mistaken as a large group of friends. Brown-Jackson’s comments were met with head nods, applause, and murmurs of agreement. For example, she acknowledged not being the only Black woman worthy or capable of sitting on the nation’s highest court. 

Gantt praised Justice Brown Jackson as “outspoken” and “vocal” in dissenting opinions on the Supreme Court. 

“It’s very traditional,” Brown-Jackson said. 

“But you don’t seem to be following tradition,” Gantt countered. Brown Jackson explained: “The court is a really interesting institution. …There are built-in mechanisms for freedom of expression of opposition.” 

Brown Jackson’s career trajectory was planned, but her accomplishments and experience cannot be denied, as Gantt said, she is “not a DEI hire.” Her resume includes serving three clerkships and tenure as a district and appellate court judge while balancing marriage and raising two daughters. 

“I was not the mom baking cookies for the bake sale,” she said. However, it was her youngest daughter, at just 11 years old, who took it upon herself to write a letter to then-President Barack Obama to encourage her mother’s appointment. 

“I was raising a child who was not afraid to speak her mind, even to the president of the United States,” she said. “It made me feel like I must be doing something right.” 

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