Lovely One: Ketanji Brown Jackson

 Book Discussion May 16, 2026 

Jackson, Ketanji Brown: Lovely One: a Memoir2024 

The title Lovely One is the English translation of Justice Jackson’s African name: Katanji Onyika. Justice Jackson is the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court. Her autobiography is a true autobiography, describing her grandparents, her parents, and she and her brother growing up.  She goes into great detail about her school years on the Debate Team and the visits to her grandparents' house following church services on Sundays. She describes her college life at Harvard, her years in musical theatre and performance oration, and the many jobs in the legal profession. It also chronicles her family life as an adult with a husband and two children.  

 Only five of us met this time, there seemed to be a lot of family obligations/celebrations going on this weekend, since it’s graduation season and class reunion season.  One of our regular attendees, Kay, at her own class reunion, left her typewritten notes. Kay focused on Justice Jackson’s mother encouraging her to recite Margaret Walker’s ‘For My People’ at an oratorical contest.  Justice Jackson’s mother knew how smart her daughter was and knew she could do it. Also, the nature of the poem itself underscored how Justice Jackson’s parents encouraged pride in their African American heritage. 

p.49” At home, my parents surrounded me with the art, fabrics, and memorabilia they had collected on their Africa trip, and with books and images that reflected our Black American experience, both the good and the bad; scholarly volumes on race and racism lived on our coffee table...” 

Kay also mentioned Clarence Earl Gideon, the defendant who appealed to the Supreme Court back in 1963, and it was established that if a defendant was too poor to hire a defense lawyer, the court had to supply him with one. Justice Jackson has archival copies of the five handwritten pages of Mr. Gideon wrote in his petition professionally framed and hung on the wall of her Supreme Court chambers.  

 After reading Kay’s observations about the book, Marian started off: 

“I was pleasantly surprised by the book. I didn’t expect the book to be so real. Because she’s a Supreme Court Justice, I thought she would use language filled with patriotism without caveats, and that she would preach black/white unity without referencing the Black experience in this country. Her parents brought her up with stories of their experiences with Jim Crow, while explicitly encouraging her to embrace her Blackness. I was pleasantly surprised that she did not sugarcoat racism and that her life experiences were real: meeting her husband, meeting his family, going with them to that swanky country club, considering what kind of life her potential children might have with these people. Would her children even be accepted among her in-laws’ friends?  Then there was hesitancy on the part of her own father. He basically said, if you have children, life is going to be hard for them. Her parents still respected her decision and, in the end, came to love and accept her husband and her in-laws.  

Despite living with discrimination, it seems that her mother’s parents were somewhat better off financially and educationally than her father’s parents. In fact, one of her father’s brothers was sentenced to life under the three-strikes rule of the early nineties. Her uncle, a petty courier, was sentenced to life, while the main distributors served no time at all.” 

 Kai followed with: 

“I read the book and listened to the audiobook, and it was from the audiobook that I got the greatest amount of understanding of “her.” She came from a family who believed in moving forward, and there was almost a formula they had in seeking success. The thing that impacted me most was her description of her daughter who has special needs. As a former special ed teacher, I had a lot of parents who could have benefited from the way Justice Jackson accepted her daughter’s long-delayed diagnosis, and the way she and her husband did all they could to help their daughter."

Kathleen added, “Justice Jackson was so smart; her parents were the right parents; she got into the right school system. I’d never heard of somebody who had everything to fall into place like that.” 

Bonnie elaborated further, saying, “And she watched her father study at the kitchen table while he was in law school. I did listen again last night to her acceptance speech that was dated April 8, 2022, and I wrote down this quote: 

‘For one generation to go from segregation to the Supreme Court. I am the dream and the hope of the slave.” When She was thanking people, she mentioned the Senior High School Debate Team.’ 

Bonnie continued, “One word that I would use to describe her is “chutzpah.” I’m using this word as the ultimate compliment, with this meaning: someone who acts with supreme self-confidence and a complete disregard for the rules, often leaving others both shocked and secretly impressed.”  

Bonnie then shared with us a New York Times article entitled, “Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson Makes Herself Heard, Prompting a Rebuke,” dated July 5, 2025. The subtitle of this headline reads: “In solo dissents this term the justice (Jackson) accused the conservative majority of lawless bias. On the term’s last day, Justice Amy Coney Barrett fired back.” The author of the article, Adam Liptak, stressed that Justice Jackson did things in writing opinions that even the most senior justices took years for them to do, and she did it in her first term.  

Shelara said, "She is the most overly qualified justice that has ever sat on that bench.  She has to sit on the Supreme Court with Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, who never tried a case. The value of the position is decreased by the caliber of the people hired."

Kai pointed out, “That’s the thing, Justice Jackson is not only brilliant; she has street smarts, that makes her complete."

Shelara, explaining how Justice Jackson’s personal dissents will be the foundation of turning the country around, said “Her job is extra hard because she knows she has to write the dissents that are going to be used to overturn these biased rulings. She believes in this country.” 

The book was beautifully written, combining both Justice Jackson’s personal life and her professional life seamlessly. The audiobook was read by Justice Jackson herself. Her voice is so calming; her demeanor is so grounded.  In the Epilogue, (p.381) she wrote, “I have a job that only 115 Americans have ever done, none of them Black women. Every morning that the Supreme Court is in session, I shrug into my robe inside my chambers, which are adorned with the paintings of Sam Gilliam, Alma Thomas, Herbert Gentry, Lonnie Holley, Glenn Ligon, and William H. Johnson. The Court’s curator procured these masterpieces from the Smithsonian and other museums; thus, a collection of works by African American artists now hangs inside this fabled institution for the first time in history.”