In the 132-year history of the City Club of Cleveland, its podium has hosted hundreds of distinguished speakers. They run the gamut of future, past and sitting presidents, political leaders of every hue and notable Americans and international speakers of every political persuasion. But according to the City Club’s CEO Dan Moulthrop, until this year, there have been only two Justices of the United States Supreme Court as City Club presenters: Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in 1987 and Justice Antonin Scalia in March of 2003.
On September 16, the City Club’s featured speaker was Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the 116th Justice of the Supreme Court and the first African American woman to serve on the high court.
Her appointment was the fulfillment of a promise made by presidential candidate Joe Biden to appoint a Black woman to the Supreme Court if elected. Confirmed by the U.S, Senate by a vote of 53-47 in 2022, her appointment made the Supreme Court reflective of the United States population. From the Court’s inception in 1789, it was comprised of only white men, until Ronald Reagan appointed Sandra Day O’Conner in 1981. Subsequent Democratic presidents appointed Justices Elena Kagan, Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Sonja Sotomayor who join Justice Jackson as the Court’s liberal minority.
Ketanji Brown Jackson brings to the Court a distinguished record of achievements. After graduating from Harvard undergraduate school and Harvard Law school, she served as a law clerk for a federal district judge, a federal appellate judge and as a law clerk for Justice Steven Breyer of the United States Supreme Court, whose seat she now occupies.
She served as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. She is also the first person to ever serve on the Supreme Court who has worked as a public defender and the first to be a native of the State of Florida.
Justice Jackson’s presentation was a part of a book tour for her recently published autobiography, Lovely One (Random House: New York, 2024). The title of her book is the English translation of her name, Ketanji Onyika, which her parents selected in recognition of their African heritage and on the suggestion of her aunt who had worked in the Peace Corps and for several international aid agencies in Africa.
Justice Jackson’s journey to the Supreme Court started with humble beginnings. Her grandparents were descendants of slaves who lived in the rural south. Her parents were both schoolteachers but when her father decided that he wanted to follow his dream to become a lawyer, her mother became the sole bread winner while her father went to law school.
The young Ketanji remembers sitting at the kitchen table with her father as he labored over his law books. It was that experience and the determination of her parents to give their children every educational experience possible that instilled in her a love for the law. She also gives credit for her success to her high school teachers who encouraged her and especially her high school debate coach.
Justice Jackson started her presentation to the 1700-person — standing room only — audience at the Cleveland Convention Center by reading from the first few pages of her book. The selection related her emotions as she was sworn in as a Justice of the Supreme Court. This reading set the tone for the remainder of her presentation which was moderated by NPR Morning Edition host, Michel Martin. While Martin did a capable job, I felt that she was a little too talky and cut into the time of the Justice’s presentation.
Justice Jackson carefully skirted any reference to topics that might come before her on the bench and any references to the current presidential election or possible tension between her and the conservative majority on the Court. While friendly and personable, she comes across both in the book and in real life as a no-nonsense judge, which has become evident with her questioning of litigants during oral arguments before the high court.
Her book takes the reader through her sometimes-lonely journey of being the only Black student in advanced placement classes in high school. As class president she had planned the prom but did not have a date. When a white male asked her why she was not going and she explained that she did not have a date, he asked her to be his date.
In the book she talks about the adjustment that she made in her life when she attended Harvard. Away from her close-knit family for the first time, she struggled until she found her niche among a group of like-minded women who formed a sisterhood that continued through undergraduate and law school and continues to this day.
She talked in her presentation and in the book a great deal about meeting her husband, Patrick Jackson, in a class at Harvard. That chance meeting led to a lifetime commitment. Patrick would go on to attend medical school and become a world-class surgeon. The couple married in 1996 and have two daughters.
For me and the other Black judges in attendance, we would have loved to have been able to ask Justice Jackson how she manages to stay civil with Justice Clarence Thomas. But such questions were clearly off limits and the Justice demonstrated that if asked, she would have been the epitome of diplomacy and tact. But I for one would love to be a fly on the wall when those two clashing spirits meet.
You will not regret reading Lovely One. It is readable and timely, with a valuable message to all Americans and especially a new generation of African Americans who are likely to have shared similar experiences with Justice Jackson. For all readers, young and old, it is a good way to reflect on the changing dynamics of American life. In addition, Justice Jackson does an excellent job of inserting valuable lessons about African American and legal history, which she intersperses though out the book and add valuable insights.
Walking in the shadow of Judge Constance Baker Motley, the first Black woman to serve as a federal judge and Justice Thurgood Marshall, whose clock graces her chambers, Americans can only look to a great future for Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson as she leaves her judicial imprint on American jurisprudence. And she will leave and imprint on your mind if you read her book.
Thanks to The City Club of Cleveland for making the presentation available to a Cleveland audience. For me and everyone in attendance, it was a memorable event.
And thank you to the American electorate that elected President Joe Biden in 2020. Had he lost that election, there would be another right-wing conservative on the Supreme Court. Elections have consequences. Justice Jackson is an example. Had Hillary Clinton been elected in 2016 we would not have Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade and granted Trump presidential immunity. Remember that when you go to the polls in November.
C. Ellen Connally is a retired judge of the Cleveland Municipal Court. From 2010 to 2014 she served as the President of the Cuyahoga County Council. An avid reader and student of American history, she is a former member of the Board of the Ohio History Connection, and past president of the Cleveland Civil War Round Table, and is currently vice president of the Cuyahoga County Soldiers and Sailors Monument Commission. She holds degrees from BGSU, CSU and is all but dissertation for a PhD from the University of Akron.