Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was honored during a ceremony Monday marking the renaming of a street near where she was raised in Miami-Dade County, Florida.
“It was while I was studying and competing and growing up here in this community that I gained self-confidence in the face of challenges,” Jackson said during a 40-minute speech at the Dennis C. Moss Cultural Arts Center. “I learned how to lean in, in spite of obstacles, to work hard to be resilient, to strive for excellence, and to believe in myself and what I could do if given the opportunity.”
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Jackson, who was appointed by President Joe Biden last year to succeed Justice Stephen Breyer, said that having her name “so prominently displayed on a street in a community that has given me so much” is an incredible honor, adding that she hoped the street would serve as a reminder for “what is possible in this great country.”
“I hope that people who are driving by might have a moment of reflection about what it means that a person from this neighborhood and someone from my background could take what this place has to offer and be well-equipped enough to then go out into the world and do what it takes to not only become the first black woman to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States — but also the first former public defender — and the first associate justice who is from the great state of Florida,” Jackson said.
The newly named Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson Street is located in a suburban neighborhood known to be populated with peacocks roaming through yards and roosting in oak trees. Although Jackson was born in Washington, D.C., her father, Johnny Brown, began working as a lawyer for the Miami-Dade County School Board in 1983. Her mother, Ellery Brown, was an educator.
Commissioner Danielle Cohen Higgins of the Miami-Dade Board of County Commissioners backed the legislation to honor the first black woman on the Supreme Court.
Higgins also honored Jackson’s parents, who were in attendance at the ceremony, saying they “taught the importance of education and hard work but also to love your country even when your country did not love you back.”
Last week, Jackson wrote her first full majority opinion since joining the high court last fall in a dispute between states over unclaimed money.
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Jackson is also slated to speak at Boston University School of Law’s convocation on May 21 and will soon release her first memoir since joining the bench, titled Lovely One.
Just above the Sunshine State, lawmakers in Georgia are considering legislation that would honor another Supreme Court justice, Clarence Thomas, with a statue on the grounds of the state capital. Appointed by President George H.W. Bush in 1991, Thomas is the second black justice to sit on the high court and succeeded the first, Thurgood Marshall.
