At times laughing and tossing back her long sisterlocks, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson engaged in a lively discussion with U.S. District Court Judge Carlton W. Reeves in the Coolidge Auditorium last week.
The packed event offered a window into the dynamic legal career of the first African American woman appointed to the Supreme Court in its history — her competitive drive, experiences in an interracial marriage and passionate dedication to helping aspiring law students.
As the featured guest of the 2025 Supreme Court Fellows Program Annual Lecture, Jackson held the audience with poignant and often humorous stories about her upbringing, the mentors who guided her and the “angels” who helped shape her unlikely journey to the nation’s highest court.
“The takeaway from my story is that anything is possible. If you believe in your ability to succeed and you put in the work … nothing worth having comes easy,” Jackson said. “I’m hoping that I’m inspiring people because if I can do it, really, anyone can.”
Her message of grit and grace, perseverance and the breaking of barriers is at the heart of her memoir, “Lovely One.” The title is inspired by her given name, Ketanji Onyika, which has roots in West Africa and her family translates as “lovely one.”
As Reeves noted, the book is a love story about the people who shaped her life.
Her parents wanted her to grow up with pride “in a society that, at least for them, had been closed off and unwelcoming to African Americans,” she shared.
Spanning nearly 400 pages, the book intertwines her personal and professional trek with the broader history of African Americans and civil rights.
She writes of her grandparents, who attended only grade school, and her parents, who grew up in the segregated South of the 1950s and 1960s. They earned degrees from historically Black colleges, and her father went on to law school, ultimately inspiring Jackson to follow in his footsteps.
A prolific writer and seasoned public speaker, Jackson said she felt compelled to write her memoir after enduring an “arduous” Senate confirmation process in 2022 and facing rising national curiosity about her journey.
“My success was not mine alone; there were so many people that had contributed, who had invested in me, and I wanted to pay tribute to them,” said Jackson, nominated by President Joe Biden to succeed Justice Stephen G. Breyer, for whom she had clerked in the 1999–2000 term.
She credited many mentors and role models along her journey, including her “flamboyant” and “larger-than-life” high school debate coach, Fran Berger.
She applied to Harvard University for college, recounting how she told the admissions committee: “I need to go to Harvard because it will help me fulfill my dream of being the first African American Supreme Court Justice to appear on a Broadway stage.”
(Last December, she checked off that box, stepping onto the stage at Broadway’s Stephen Sondheim Theatre for a walk-on role in the musical “& Juliet.”)
She wasn’t kidding about her interest in theater. She told of once partnering in drama class with future Academy Award-winner Matt Damon, outshining him in their performance of a scene from “Waiting for Godot,” despite his community theater experience.
“When it was over, the professor said, ‘Ketanji, you were very good. Matt, we’ll talk,’” she said with a smile. “I remember thinking, ‘I was better than Matt Damon.’ ”
She earned both her undergraduate and law degrees with honors from Harvard, then moved to the professional world.
She interned with a public defender program in Harlem, clerked for three federal judges and served as both a staff attorney and vice chair of the U.S. Sentencing Commission.
She then worked at various corporate law firms, where she was often the only Black lawyer in the room — and overlooked or mistaken for a secretary.
She met her future husband Patrick, now a prominent surgeon, while still in college. Reeves, the moderator, asked about the moment Patrick visited her parents in Miami to ask for her hand in marriage. Her father reminded him of the realities of interracial unions, which were still relatively rare in the 1990s.
“Patrick was willing to acknowledge that and accepted it, and what that meant for us, teaching and raising our daughters to be proud of who they are,” Jackson emphasized.
After Justice Antonin Scalia’s passing in 2016, Jackson’s youngest daughter, Leila, then 11, encouraged her mother to “apply” for the Supreme Court. When Jackson explained that presidents nominate justices, Leila sent a letter to President Barack Obama, signing off with, “Thank you for listening!”
At the time, Jackson said she thought that if her daughter “was not afraid to speak her mind even to the president of the United States, I must be doing something right.”
Jackson also reflected on the personal sacrifices of her legal career, including cutting her hair short during her Supreme Court clerkship to avoid time-consuming haircare routines. Sixteen years ago, with the help of her stylist, she returned to her sisterlocks as an affirmation of her heritage, she said.
In an interview following Jackson’s appearance, Sylvia Randolph, a longtime volunteer at the Library, said she appreciated Jackson’s openness about her family life.
“She didn’t have time for distractions or [to] give time to anything other than her work — not even her hair,” Randolph said. “I’ve gone through that journey. Sometimes, the little things that mean a lot have to go.”
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