We all should bask in the limelight of Ketanji Brown Jackson’s achievement | Editorial
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Ketanji Brown Jackson makes history as first Black woman justice
On Thursday, April 6, the Senate voted 53 to 47 to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court. Jackson will become the first Black woman and the first Floridian on the court upon taking the oath of office.
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Ketanji Brown Jackson made history today. So did President Joe Biden, and the U.S. Senate — including three Republicans — and Florida, and Miami, where her roots runs deep.
In fact, the nation should be in awe. First, Jackson will be the first Black woman to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. Second, that nation should be in awe over what it took for a Black woman to get to this judicial pinnacle.
No, not just her stellar qualifications. Not just her soaring over the circus of a Judiciary Committee hearing where she faced vapid and hostile questions about children’s books and womanhood.
No, what it’s taken to get Jackson to this point was centuries of Black women being denied their humanity in this country, being mocked for their very existence — despite being integral to this nation’s very existence — being denied their children, auctioned off into slavery, and being denied their men, lynched, imprisoned, killed for just being.
Jackson clearly knows on whose shoulders she stands. Efforts to wipe those stories from the history books aside, everyone should.
We congratulate Jackson, and eagerly await the opportunity to add “Justice” to her name.
This story was originally published April 7, 2022 at 5:29 PM.
