Regina de Heer: We're out here on Howard University's campus, and we're asking people, what does it mean to you to have the first Black woman appointed to the Supreme Court in your lifetime?

Speaker: It means a lot, especially for the Black community.

Speaker: I think it's really important that we have representation as Black people and, like, Black women specifically, especially because when you're appointed, you're appointed for life.

Speaker: The country was founded to be for the free people, and it shows that we're taking a step in the right direction.

Speaker: As a Black woman myself, I remember growing up, it was hard to identify with people in positions of power because they didn't look like me. So being 20 years old now, it's so cool to see Black women in positions of power that I never dreamed could be possible.

Speaker: She's taking really big steps towards more of an inclusive future, and that's all that we could truly ask for. Hopefully, this is something that won't end with her.

[music]

Kai Wright: It's Notes from America. I'm Kai Wright, coming to you this week from the National Archives in Washington, DC. Hello, DC.

[applause]

Kai Wright: All right, this is a special edition of our show. We are here in partnership with We The People as part of the March On festival, which is dedicated to telling the stories of civil rights movements. Our show has always kept history at the center of our conversation. This week we have the incredible opportunity to meet someone whose personal story is now a huge part of the official history of this country. Ketanji Brown Jackson is an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. She joined the court in June of 2022 after being nominated by President Biden. She is, among many other things, the first Black woman to serve on the high court. She joins us today because she has written a best selling memoir. It's called Lovely One. Justice Jackson, welcome to Notes from America.

Ketanji Brown Jackson: Well, thank you for having me. I'm delighted to be here.

Kai Wright: It is such a joy, I have to say, to start us off here that we are birthday twins.

Ketanji Brown Jackson: Are we?

Kai Wright: We are, indeed. I was also born on September 14th.

Ketanji Brown Jackson: Wow.

Kai Wright: In the early 1970s. I say that not only to ingratiate myself to you but also because you have brought up often that Black people of our age, of our generation born in that era, that we are the first generation inheritors of the civil rights movement. I have actually always thought of myself that way. I wonder if you can just unpack what you mean when you say that and how that fact of history shapes you.

Ketanji Brown Jackson: Oh, my goodness. Well, thank you for having me and for elucidating the fact that you and I have this in common. I say in the book that if Dr. Martin Luther King gave America a metaphorical check come due, our generation was the first to reap the installments that we were right there in 1970, which is when I was born, within five or six years after the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the end of Jim Crow segregation.

What it meant for me, and perhaps for you, is that my parents, who had grown up in segregation in Miami, Florida, saw this as an opportunity to invest in their daughter's potential in a way that they did not have growing up. They were not allowed to go to public parks and swim in public pools and take music lessons and do all the things. When I was born, they said, "Here's our shot. Our daughter is going to do everything." They just made sure that I was prepared for the opportunity to live fully in America.

Kai Wright: Well, also, I have to say, I don't know any way to put this other than bluntly. You grew up in a very pro-Black house.

Ketanji Brown Jackson: I did. My parents had grown up in Miami, but they both went to historically Black colleges and universities. My mother went to school at Tuskegee University in Alabama. My dad went to North Carolina Central. They really took to heart their African Americanness. They gave their daughter an African name. When I was born, my aunt was in the Peace Corps in Africa, and my mother asked her to send African names. When I was born, my parents were both public school teachers, and my dad taught history. He was part of the development of Black history curriculum in the early 1970s, so they really were focused.

Kai Wright: Here at the DC public schools?

Ketanji Brown Jackson: In the DC public schools.

Kai Wright: Right here.

Ketanji Brown Jackson: I was born in Washington, DC. Then my father, after teaching public schools at Ballou here history for a couple of years, decided that he wanted to go back to law school or wanted to go to school to learn the law because of its intersection with history and all of the things that he was learning. He got into the University of Miami, which is where both of my parents had grown up. We moved back to Miami. The thing that was so pivotal for me about that experience is that we actually lived on the campus of the University of Miami when I was four, five, six years old. I remember sitting at the kitchen table with my dad with his law books, and I'm with my coloring books, and we're working together. I never thought you could do anything but go to law school because that was my experience from that young, and it was such an impression that I always wanted to be a lawyer.

Kai Wright: All of this is incredibly familiar and legible to me, and I imagine many Black people who grew up in striving households of that era. You write about the values of grit and perseverance, and you got to get through this. I do wonder, and I wonder this for myself, the toll that takes on us also. Have you thought about the weight that comes with the inheritance of being the children of the first inheritors of the civil rights movement?

Ketanji Brown Jackson: There's some weight to it. I guess I was a pleaser growing up. I just wanted to make my parents happy, and they just wanted me to do everything. They always told me, "Has this thing been done before?" When I was whining about doing something, my mother would say, "I'm sorry, have you seen someone do this before?" If this can be done, you can do it. That was her attitude and the way in which they told me to approach the world. I embraced it.

I think the weight, to the extent that it existed, for me at least, was I went to predominantly white public schools growing up. I think being one or two or three in my honors classes and AP classes really made me feel by myself a fair amount and also representing a fair amount. So there's the pressure of not wanting to do poorly, of always wanting to be on top of everything, because you get a sense that people are watching to see how you're going to do in this environment.

Kai Wright: Is that what drove your ambition? You were a wildly ambitious child.

Ketanji Brown Jackson: I was.

Kai Wright: At 12, is when you decided you wanted to be a federal judge?

Ketanji Brown Jackson: Pretty much. I was in middle school, and I learned about our birthday twin, Constance Baker Motley.

Kai Wright: Briefly introduce us to Constance Baker Motley.

Ketanji Brown Jackson: Constance Baker Motley was the first African American female federal judge. She's also the first Black woman to argue a case in the Supreme Court. In fact, she argued 10 cases in the Supreme Court and won 9 of them. She was amazing. She was an associate of Justice Marshall. She helped to argue and do the strategies behind Brown versus the board. As I say in the book and as I've said in these talks, she never had the chance to be on the Supreme Court because of the times in which she lived. For me, that makes me feel so grateful, but learning about her and knowing that she shared our birthday when I was in middle school, I said, "Oh, I want to be a federal judge."

Kai Wright: It's crazy. Stated in your application to Harvard College that you intended. This is what blows me a minute. You stated that you intended to be the first Black woman on the Supreme Court. You were, what, 17?

Ketanji Brown Jackson: I did.

[applause]

Kai Wright: Believe somebody when they tell you something, I suppose. That level of ambition, was that driven by this idea of being the only person in those rooms?

Ketanji Brown Jackson: I don't know. I haven't really parsed it out. It was just always who I was. I think it was the feeling that was given to me by my parents that you really can do anything you want to do. It was just a matter of identifying what it was I wanted to do and be. Then you work hard to train yourself to be the best you can be in that position.

Kai Wright: Did you ever, at any point, waver in that belief?

Ketanji Brown Jackson: Not really, no.

[laughter]

Ketanji Brown Jackson: There were obvious times. I talk in the book a little bit about arriving at Harvard, where I went for undergrad and law school, but I had gone to public schools. I didn't really know anything about Harvard except that we had gone there. My speech and debate team, I was an orator in high school, and our coach had taken us to various tournaments around the country. Harvard had a tournament, and I thought, "This seemed like a pretty nice school. Maybe I should apply." I get in and I go there, and it was so foreign. It was just completely a different world than south Florida. I think there were times, especially my freshman year, when I felt like, "Oh, what have I gotten myself into?" Can I really do this job?

Kai Wright: Well, we will come back to that. We need to take a break. You're listening to Notes from America. I'm Kai Wright, and I'm talking with Supreme Court justice Ketanji Brown Jackson about her bestselling memoir, Lovely One. We are here with a live audience at the National Archives as part of the March On festival. Coming up, we'll talk about the role of dissent on the court. First, we're going to be treated to a performance by the wonderful group, Women of the Calabash. Stay with us.

[applause]

[MUSIC - Women of the Calabash: Ishe Oluwa]

[applause]

Regina de Heer: We're out here in front of the US Supreme Court building. What brings you here?

Speaker: Because it was on the way to the hostel that I'm staying at.

Regina de Heer: Do you know what [crosstalk]?

Speaker: I have no clue. It says equal justice under law, sir.

Speaker: To see the place where our future is going to be decided and, I don't know, to maybe send some good wishes to the people who are looking out for us and maybe shake my fist a little bit at the ones that aren't.

Speaker: This is my first time in DC, so I just wanted to come and see the most important building, especially this one.

Regina de Heer: What does this building represent?

Speaker: It represents democracy.

Speaker: It is a physical representation of one branch of our federal government is right here. You can stand on it. You can feel it. You can touch it. You can go inside it.

Speaker: Supreme Court cases obviously mean a lot to attorneys because we turn to them and we look to them. Justices are people we look up to.

Speaker: It's very interesting to stand here and look at equal justice under the law and then think, but is it, with all the things that have been happening recently? It makes you think about the people that are in there making those decisions.

Speaker: What the court does is so critically important to individuals, to institutions, to families, and to generations of citizens. They make a huge, huge difference.

Kai Wright: It's Notes from America. I'm Kai Wright, coming to you this week alongside a live audience at the National Archives in Washington, DC.

[applause]

Kai Wright: We are here for the March On festival, and I'm joined by Supreme Court justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. We're talking about her new memoir, Lovely One. Justice Jackson, as a sitting member of the court, you, of course, do not discuss specific cases or political debates. We can talk a bit about being on the Supreme Court in this moment in history. In the voices you heard as we were coming back from the break, you heard a number of sentiments, but you did hear an echo of something our listeners have told us repeatedly on this show, which is that a lot of people really distrust the Supreme Court right now. There is just a real question about the legitimacy of this institution.

You've made history joining this court at a time when it's just-- it's a weird time in its history, and, of course, you certainly don't need to answer for the actions that led to that. I do wonder what you'd say to people who are simultaneously inspired by your appointment and not sure that they can believe in this institution to use its power fairly right now.

Ketanji Brown Jackson: I appreciated your segment of recording people in front of the court. I especially appreciated the person who said, "This is a government institution. You can be here. You can touch it. You can go inside it." I would encourage people to continue to be engaged in their government. The idea of the Supreme Court standing beyond and above public criticism and critique, I think, is not a sound one. We are a branch of government, just like the other branches of government. The thing that distinguishes us, in a way, is that we need public legitimacy. It is the way in which our opinions are enforced. We don't have an army. We don't have the power of the purse. What we have is people who believe in the rule of law and who trust this institution to safeguard it.

What I would say is, continue to engage, read our opinions, form your own opinions about what it is that the court is doing. I am doing what I can as a justice to try to explain to the public that law and politics are two different things and to do what I know justices do and are supposed to do in our government.

Kai Wright: You're obviously a student of the court's history and a deep student of civil rights history. You were sworn in on Justice Harlan's bible.

Ketanji Brown Jackson: I was.

Kai Wright: Now I'm going to ask you for therapy for me about thinking about the Supreme Court. My armchair history of the court, I feel like its history is primarily one of restricting our rights, with the brief exception of a little period in the mid-20th century. So much of the history of the court has been tough for Black people. Is that a fair understanding of the court's history? How do you think about the court's history?

Ketanji Brown Jackson: I think the court has a long history. We go through different periods. The country has a long history, and we go through different periods, some more difficult than others. You are not wrong to observe that there are times in which the court has ruled in ways that have impacted African Americans. Then we know that there are times when the court has done things like Brown versus the board that really made an enormous difference in the lives of African Americans in this country. It's nothing linear, the life of the court.

Kai Wright: Part of why I asked that is, we have generations of history of debate in the community about how do we make change, and there are folks who are like, "We should go. We should leave. We should get out of here." There are people who say, "We got to fight it from the outside." Then there are folks who say, "We have to be in these institutions that are government." You are clearly someone, correct me if I'm wrong, who believes in the institutions-

Ketanji Brown Jackson: Absolutely.

Kai Wright: -of the United States.

Ketanji Brown Jackson: It is an incredible honor to be able to serve the American people in this way. I encourage anyone who really cares about government to get involved in some way, whether it be as a voter or as a person who decides they want to actually enter the institution.

Kai Wright: Can you make the case to that cynic who says, "These institutions were built to keep us down. Why would I engage in them? This can't work"? Can you make the case for why it can't?

Ketanji Brown Jackson: All I can say is, you talked about history. Think where we would be if that had been the prevailing attitude when my grandparents were growing up. We have made so much progress as a country, in part because people have decided that we, too, are Americans and we are entitled to participate and to do what we can to make this country better, to live up to the ideals that are in our constitution. That's what I'm trying to do and what I encourage other Americans to do.

Kai Wright: Given the composition of the court, you'll likely spend a lot of time on the court writing dissenting opinions. Now, I don't want to presume anything, but those of us who watch from the outside can assume that in some of the most public and far-reaching cases, you're likely to write a lot of dissents. What is the role of a dissenting opinion in your mind? How do you think about the purpose of dissent on the court?

Ketanji Brown Jackson: I think dissent is crucial in a lot of ways. One is that it really demonstrates to the public that there are different ways of thinking about legal issues, that there are reasoned, reasonable debate about the issues of our time, that we can disagree without being disagreeable. All of these modeling functions, I think, are very important, and it also gives those who disagree with the majority's view the opportunity to explain their position. You hope that your explanation will be persuasive to people who will then take it in the future, perhaps, and make it the law.

Kai Wright: One of your most widely discussed written opinions is your dissent in the court's 2023 ruling that struck down affirmative action at your alma mater, Harvard, and at UNC, and the majority opinion has been characterized as asserting that we have a colorblind society. It certainly pointed to Brown v. Board as precedent for demanding race-neutral admissions policies. You wrote in your strongly worded dissent that that ruling was "truly a tragedy for us all." You further pointed out that the majority stated that the ruling doesn't apply to military academies.

I just want to quote what you wrote. You wrote, "The court has come to rest on the bottom line conclusion that racial diversity in higher education is only worth potentially preserving insofar as it might be needed to prepare Black Americans and other underrepresented minorities for success in the bunker, not the boardroom." I wonder about your thought process in crafting that dissent. How did you think about what was important to say in that moment in history?

Ketanji Brown Jackson: One thing I will say is that my dissent was not the principal dissent in the case. I wrote an additional dissent. In terms of the arguments that most directly responded to the majority's view, Justice Sotomayor wrote for me, Justice Kagan, and herself to make that kind of direct response. My dissent was designed to talk primarily about the history and about my just wanting to make sure that the public understood what at least my view was of the purpose of affirmative action, the reasons why these kinds of programs had been put into place to begin with, having to do with the arc of history and the ways in which African Americans had historically been treated. I felt as though that had not been given sufficient attention in the majority opinion. I wanted to highlight that reality.

Kai Wright: That reality.

Ketanji Brown Jackson: Yes.

Kai Wright: Education it's been such a huge part of your story and your family's story, and access to it as Black folks certainly in the 21st century, but that generation in particular, it was such a big part of how we were brought up. I have to imagine that this was a uniquely difficult case to take on.

Ketanji Brown Jackson: There are many difficult cases on the Supreme Court.

Kai Wright: Indeed. Maybe this is something you can't speak to. I imagine, given everything I know about your biography, having to weigh in on this question of whether or not affirmative action should exist. I wonder about the emotional reality of that.

Ketanji Brown Jackson: I will tell you, what was particularly challenging for me was that it was one of the first cases I heard as a justice. You can't control the timing of things, but I think I would have preferred to been there for more than a minute before I had to deal with such a fraught issue. There were aspects of the issue that absolutely had some resonance for me as an African American for whom education was extraordinarily important in my family and in my story. I think that happens in many cases for many justices. One of my favorite quotes is from Oliver Wendell Holmes, who said that the life of the law is not logic. It is experience. What judges are doing in many instances is evaluating the reliability or reasonableness of arguments in light of their understanding and their experience. I think having that case that early really did call upon experiences that may have been unique to me as the first African American woman on the court.

Kai Wright: Any Supreme Court nomination at this point in history is a bit of a political spectacle. I cannot imagine that process. The concept of affirmative action was very much part of the public discussion around your nomination. I'd say even on our show, as it was unfolding and we were taking calls, we got a lot of calls from Black women who were so happy, so thrilled by this, and also very frustrated that the president had even said that he was going to nominate a Black woman, because it set up this conversation about your qualifications. I guess it would be remiss for me not to ask you to answer those listeners who so many times wondered on our show how you navigated that moment where the historic nature of your nomination was put in tension with your qualifications.

Ketanji Brown Jackson: I would say I paid very little attention to it. The reason is because of my qualifications, because of my resonance. That critique was clearly nonsensical when you looked at who I was, what I had done, how I was trained, where I went to law school, the three clerkships that I did, including on the Supreme Court. I honestly did not pay much attention to that at all.

[applause]

Kai Wright: Dear listener, asked and answered. I do have to imagine how bizarre it would be to be at-- just the whole world is talking about you in that moment, and I can't imagine you see yourself as a reflection of your actual human self in that conversation. Did you write this memoir in reaction to that? Was this your effort to tell, "This is my story"?

Ketanji Brown Jackson: No, not really. I wrote this memoir out of gratitude, sheer gratitude. I started writing it just a little over two years ago, right after the confirmation, so grateful that I had survived what you say is a big public spectacle, and really wanting to pay tribute to the people and the circumstances that I felt were really the most responsible for preparing me for this moment, for helping me to be the person that I am and the lawyer that I am. The book is about explaining where I come from, and I thought it was important to do that.

Kai Wright: This is Notes from America. I'm Kai Wright, and I'm talking with Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson about her best-selling memoir, Lovely One. We are here with a live audience at the National Archives as part of the March On festival. Coming up, we'll talk about the justice's background in stage performance and her Broadway dreams, plus some questions from students at Howard University. First, here is another performance from the Women of the Calabash.

[applause]

[MUSIC - Women of the Calabash]

[applause]

Suzanne: Hey, it's Suzanne. I'm a producer with the show. It was really inspiring to be in the room not only with Supreme Court justice Ketanji Brown Jackson but with a live audience in DC. When Notes from America does live events, the energy is remarkable. One of those shows has earned us a spot as a finalist for a 2024 Signal Award for podcast that define culture. Back in January, we were live at the Apollo Theater in New York for a celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. and a conversation about the politicization of the word woke.

That show could win a Signal Award for best live podcast recording, but we need your help. Community voting for the Signal Awards is open right now, and we would love it if you could take a moment to show your support for the show and send us a vote. It's really easy to do. Check out the link in the show notes for this episode, or visit noteswithkai on Instagram and click the link in bio. Select Notes from America with Kai Wright, and that's it. It's super easy. Thank you so much for listening and for voting. Now let's get back to the episode.

Ketanji Brown Jackson: It has taken 232 years and 115 prior appointments for a Black woman to be selected to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States, but we've made it. We've made it all of us. All of us. Our children are telling me that they see now more than ever that here in America anything is possible.

Kai Wright: It's Notes from America. I'm Kai Wright, coming to you this week from the March On festival with a fabulous live audience at the National Archives in Washington, DC.

[applause]

Kai Wright: I am joined by some Supreme Court justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson. We're talking about her new memoir, Lovely One. Justice Jackson, my favorite part of your memoir is learning about your stage dream. Not stage dreams, your stage realities. In high school, in Miami, you were a fiercely competitive, champion debater, but you did not compete in the categories where you just argue with each other. You competed in the performance categories. Tell me about that. You were a performer. Explain to people who don't know this world.

Ketanji Brown Jackson: In two different ways. People think of speech and debate, and you have an idea of the debaters who go back and forth and they argue, but they're also speech categories. One of them, which was my main event, was original oratory, which is where you write your own speech and you memorize it, a 10-minute speech, and you perform it competitively in tournaments. Eventually, hopefully, you make it to the final round, and then you are crowned the winner, if you're lucky. Then there are dramatic and humorous interpretation categories, which are sort of like Anna Deavere Smith's performances, one woman performances, where you take plays and you cut them down into 10-minute segments and you embody the different characters, and you do that as a 10-minute segment competitively. I did all three of those categories in high school.

Kai Wright: It's so cool. One of the performances you write about in the memoir really stuck with me. It's one where you took two poems, one by Nikki Giovanni and one by Ntozake Shange, and remixed them as a comment on the Black children who were being found murdered in Atlanta at that time. I have asked you to read a bit of that part of it. I've marked it here in the book. This is the section you're going to read. The section that Jesse's going to read just to set it up for a second. Begins with the poem. Part of the poem from Ntozake Shange. Take it away.

Ketanji Brown Jackson: "Because he's Black and poor. He's disappeared. The name was lost. The games weren't played. Nobody tucks him in at night. Wipes traces of cornbread and syrup from his fingers. Every time the earth moves, it's me and all my friends flying underground. Off to a soccer game or basketball, always running. I can make the earth move, flying underground. As I recited the braided piece, I continuously altered my countenance and inflection back and forth to signal changes between the two different narrators. First Shange, followed by Giovanni. No ropes this time. No tar and feathers weren't. No parades of sheets, fires, and crosses. Nothing. No signs. Teacher says, I do real good in school. I like to read books. I draw pictures with lots of sun and clouds."

Kai Wright: Thank you for that.

[applause]

Kai Wright: The peace goes on. There's more to it. That's a little piece of it, but what about these murders? What about that moment brought you to-- what moved you to do that?

Ketanji Brown Jackson: I mentioned that I had grown up in predominantly white school settings and I had a wonderful, wonderful debate coach, Fran Berger, who was fabulous, and she would offer her students pieces that she was familiar with from her repertoire. I did a lot of Neil Simon and a lot of plays of that genre. I got to a point when I was maybe in 11th grade where I really noticed that in my rounds and in my competitions, there weren't a lot of pieces that represented my culture, my heritage. I decided, having lived through-- I think the murders were within the decade before this period.

Kai Wright: The early '80s.

Ketanji Brown Jackson: Exactly. Having lived through that very, very difficult time for Black kids in the southeast, I wanted to do something that represented that. So I created this piece, and I did it for the first time at Emory in Atlanta, and it was really quite something.

Kai Wright: And won.

Ketanji Brown Jackson: And won. [laughs]

[laughter]

Kai Wright: I was a little kid at the time as well, and I remember being scared.

Ketanji Brown Jackson: Terrified.

Kai Wright: One of my few early childhood memories is fear, because of that story.

Ketanji Brown Jackson: Yes.

Kai Wright: Did it impact you, that story?

Ketanji Brown Jackson: Oh, absolutely. There we are. We're young Black kids. I'm in Florida, and I just have a memory of turning on the news, and they're saying these children are disappearing. Nobody can figure out where they are. They're turning up dead. It was very, very, very stressful.

Kai Wright: What is it about performance that drew you? You already knew you wanted to be a Supreme Court justice. You wanted to be a lawyer. That's an arguing kind of space. [crosstalk]

Ketanji Brown Jackson: I said my parents wanted me to do all the things. When I was five, six, seven years old, my mother had enrolled me in the Miami-Dade County Youth Fair speech program, and I was on the stage. One of my very first recitations was Margaret Walker, for my people everywhere, singing their slave songs repeatedly. I memorized this when I was seven years old. I always had a love of being on the stage and performing.

Kai Wright: You have declared that you want to be on Broadway. Do you intend to be on Broadway still?

Ketanji Brown Jackson: I would love to. You mentioned my essay. What I said was, I want to be the first Black woman Supreme Court justice to appear on a Broadway stage.

Kai Wright: To be [crosstalk].

Ketanji Brown Jackson: This is very important.

[applause]

Kai Wright: You are not yet done. You got my ticket. In Miami, you had a childhood friend named Sunny, who you write about in the book. She's white.

Ketanji Brown Jackson: Yes.

Kai Wright: That was a special relationship for you?

Ketanji Brown Jackson: Very special.

Kai Wright: She shared with you at some point, I think, after you were adults that she had been hurt by the anti-Black racism that she saw you experience in your childhood, but you yourself remembered it. You thought, "I don't know what she's talking about. I didn't have that experience." Why do you think that's the case? What do you think was the difference between the two there that she was seeing this and you were like, "Eh."

Ketanji Brown Jackson: I don't know. It was surprising to me. Sunny's mother went back to law school, and she grew up on the campus of the University of Miami. She was my very first friend. The two of us there, little girls on the law school campus, and we went to public elementary school, and years later, she said, "I noticed how some of the teachers were harder on the Black kids, and they would punish people for small things and Black kids, but not the white kids." I had no independent memory of that. I don't know why. I think part of perhaps my own way of moving through the world was not to pay attention, not to focus on those sorts of things, because that just enabled me to do what it is that I needed to do.

Kai Wright: Our show is usually a live call-in show where we invite listeners to join us by asking questions and share their own life experiences. Since we couldn't do that this week because we're here at the archives, what we did do was go over the campus of Howard University and offer students a chance to submit questions to you. Before I share a few of those, so there's a story in your memoir that I love where you go and tell your grandmother about being admitted to Harvard. She has a reaction. What was her reaction?

Ketanji Brown Jackson: My grandmother, who had no more than grade school education but had worked hard as a nurse's aide to help put her children through historically Black universities. My parents were first-generation. I said, "Grandma, I'm so excited. I got into Harvard." She said, "Oh, Howard, baby, that is so wonderful." I said, "Oh, no, grandma. I know I had said I wanted to go to school in Washington, DC, but this is a school in Massachusetts, and it's really good. She said, "Oh, well, I'm sure that Harvard is a perfectly good school, too.

Kai Wright: That's for all you Howard people out there in all of your Howard Chauvinism. Let's do some of these questions from Howard students. Here is the first one.

Speaker: What inspires her to keep going? Because I'm sure it's a difficult position to be in.

Ketanji Brown Jackson: Wow. I'm inspired by history. I'm inspired by the women and people who came before me, who paved the way for me to be doing this job. What keeps me going is the young people, who I hope that I'm inspiring. Paying it forward, passing it along.

Kai Wright: This cross-cultural or cross-generational dialogue that your parents, we were the inheritors of their work. Maybe these young people will be the inheritors of your work. I can hear that. Let's hear the next one.

Speaker: What would you say to young Black girls who are looking up to you and wanting to be in these positions of power?

Kai Wright: I think just to elaborate on it a little bit, like the idea of stepping into power and specifically stepping into power as a Black woman. What is your advice for that?

Ketanji Brown Jackson: Oh, my goodness. I feel like you have to own your greatness, and we have so many opportunities now, and you have to prepare yourself to take advantage of them. When I went through my investiture for my very first court appointment, I was appointed as a trial judge first, and my daughters were, at that point, seven and five or something. As part of my speech, I gave them advice. I think it's the same advice I would give to your listener. I said, "Girls, if you take anything from my lessons, from my life, it is to work hard, be kind, have faith, and believe that anything is possible." I really mean that.

Kai Wright: It does make me return to the weight of it and how you manage the weight of it.

Ketanji Brown Jackson: You have to decide what it is that you want to do and be. Anything that you want to do or anything that's worth doing takes a lot of effort, a lot of work. The question is, what are you willing to work for? Once you've identified that, then you just go for it with all of your ability.

Kai Wright: I'm going to play one more, which is basically the bit of the same thing I just asked you, but I want to hear the student ask it as well.

Speaker: How do you do it? I don't know if I could just be in her position. Again, I know, especially with her being the first Black woman, she's doing it for a reason that's greater than herself. I wonder, how does she not have those moments where, whether it be imposter syndrome or, again, whenever she is in one of those moments that we saw her in a little over a year ago where she has to justify her actions? My thing is just how does she manage to stand so strong?

Ketanji Brown Jackson: Great question. I, again, go back to my parents, how I was raised. They're instilling in me a very strong sense of who I am and what I can do. There now are very few imposter syndrome moments because I'm prepared for this because I worked hard for this. When I did my Supreme Court investiture speech, I said, "I have a seat at the table now, and I'm ready to work," and I am. I just think you have to get to the point in your life where you've decided this is the path I'm going to take, and you put everything into preparing yourself to be the best you can be. When the moment comes, you'll be ready.

Kai Wright: When you wrote that at eight years old was the first time you started to see the idea of having a public face. You quote in the book at length W.E. Du Bois's double consciousness about striving, achieving Black people. This need to be two people at once. Do you still have that? At eight years old, you were putting that public face on, and you talked about how it made you go away by yourself sometimes. You still feel like you have to wear that?

Ketanji Brown Jackson: I feel like there's a species of that that makes me actually introverted in some way. Even though I have loved being on the stage and I love being performing, I think in my heart of hearts I like to be by myself because it's, as I say in the book, a soul-deep sigh of relief because you feel like you don't have to always be representing. But I'm honored to do it in this position.

Kai Wright: Ketanji Brown Jackson is an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court. Her memoir is called Lovely One. Justice Jackson, thank you so much.

Ketanji Brown Jackson: Thank you. It was a pleasure to be here. Thank you.

[applause]

Kai Wright: Notes from America is a production of WNYC Studios. This episode was produced by Regina de Heer and made in partnership with the March On festival, telling stories that move and the AIDS Healthcare Foundation through the We The People national campaign, elevating the power of democracy for all Americans. Theme music and sound design by Jared Paul. Our show's team also includes Katerina Barton, Karen Frillmann, Suzanne Gaber, Matthew Mirando, Siona Petros, and Lindsey Foster Thomas. I am Kai Wright. Thanks for spending this time with us. I leave you with the wonderful sounds of the women of Calabash.

[applause]

[MUSIC - Women of the Calabash]

 

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