Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson called on the nation Friday to come to terms with some of history’s ugliest truths as he confronts the nation’s roiled debates about racism and violence against Black Americans.
Speaking from the pulpit of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church, Judge Jackson, the first Black woman to serve on the nation’s highest court, said she was “the first to remember, to commemorate, to celebrate, and to warn “I visited Alabama,” he said. ” She was the keynote speaker to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Ku Klux Klan bombing that killed four girls as they arrived at church for Sunday morning services.
“If we are to continue to move forward as a nation, we cannot allow fear of discomfort to drown out knowledge, truth, and history,” Justice Jackson told an audience of several hundred people. “There are certainly parts of this country’s story that are difficult to think about. I know it is difficult to remember or relive the kind of atrocities we commemorate today. But I also know that forgetting them is dangerous.”
“You can’t forget, because uncomfortable lessons are the ones that teach you the most about yourself,” she added. “You can’t forget because you can’t learn from past mistakes you don’t know exist.”
Judge Jackson’s speech was a rare occasion. Today’s judges rarely appear in public, and when they do, they usually give lectures at law schools or other academic venues. Although many of the justices attend judicial conferences and give speeches at college commencement ceremonies, the ones who made notable appearances during the civil rights movement were Justice Jackson’s predecessor, Justice Stephen Breyer, and Justice Thurgood Marshall, who was on the court for the first time, was the only one. -Related events.
Judge Jackson’s speech at the church was a clear nod to her own role in history and the ongoing fight for racial justice in this country. During her confirmation hearing last year, Republican lawmakers who oppose the teaching of slavery and racism as part of the country’s history frequently questioned her support for civil rights.
In his speech, Jackson acknowledged the “exhausting” journey to the high court and said it was part of the reason he accepted the invitation to keynote the event.
“I did not reach my professional heights on my own, and after the terrible tragedy that snuffed out the short lives of these four people, I know that people of all races and of courage and conviction have followed my path. “I understand what you have carved out for me, the little girls who are in this sacred space,” she said. “I came to Alabama with a grateful heart because, unlike those four girls, I lived with the sole responsibility of serving our great country. ”
In many ways, Ms. Jackson’s speech was an example of the constant emphasis on her appointment. As the first black female Supreme Court justice, her voice could be as influential as her vote.
This speech came less than three months after the Supreme Court’s decision. defeated affirmative actionoverturned decades of precedent by declaring race-conscious college admissions programs at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina illegal.
Jackson’s appointment is in no way expected to change the outcome of the conservative-majority court, and she has recused herself from the Harvard case because of a conflict of interest in serving on her alma mater’s board. Ta.
But amid fierce dissent, Ms. Jackson strongly criticized the court’s position that America has effectively entered an era of desegregation. “In an attitude that allows them to have their cake and eat it too, today the majority is pulling the ripcord and declaring statutorily ‘colorblindness for everyone,'” she said in her University of North Carolina lawsuit. I wrote this in a dissenting opinion. “But just because race is considered irrelevant in the law does not mean it is irrelevant in life.”
In opposing the decision, she also clashed with the court’s other black member, Justice Clarence Thomas, a longtime skeptic of affirmative action.
Justice Thomas, addressing the court as the decision was announced, said the country had overcome the struggles of the 1950s and 1960s for equal access to education for black Americans. “This is not 1958 or 1968,” he said. “Today’s young people carry no moral debt from their ancestors.”
In his speech in Birmingham, Judge Jackson spoke about the racial violence that occurred in the pursuit of civil rights, including how Martin Luther King Jr. was in a Birmingham jail months before honoring the four girls. She talked about how her parents taught her about. The funeral was attended by an estimated 4,000 people, many of whom spilled onto the street outside the church’s main entrance.
Judge Jackson said: “There was a reason why my parents felt it was important to introduce me to uncomfortable topics, and it wasn’t to make me feel like a victim or to break my spirit.” Ta. “On the contrary, my parents understood that I needed to know hard truths in order to expand my horizons. They knew that we could know where we were and where we were going. understood that it was just a matter of recognizing where we were.”
Before Jackson took the stage, church bells rang four times and a bomb exploded around 10:22 a.m., killing Denise McNair, 11, Carol Robertson, Addie Mae Collins and Cynthia. -Told the moment Wesley’s four girls died. 14 in total.
“They could have broken down barriers. They could have shattered ceilings and gone on to become doctors, lawyers and judges appointed to our nation’s highest courts,” Justice Jackson said. Ta.
Sitting in the audience were her sister Addie Mae, her friend, and Sarah Collins Rudolph, who lost an eye in the bombing.The church also rang two more bells Johnny Robinson and Virgil Warekilled in the riots that followed the bombing.
Days before the bombing, Alabama Governor George Wallace famously declared that “no white person anywhere in the South wants to integrate,” and that what was needed instead was “a few first-rate funerals.” be.
“Yes, learning about our nation’s history can be painful, but history is also our best teacher,” Judge Jackson said. “Yes, our past is filled with too much violence, too much hatred, and too much prejudice. But can we really say that we are not facing the same evil now? Do you want it?”
kitty bennett contributed to research.
