‘On The Threshold Of History’: Ketanji Brown Jackson Talks Memoir at Harvard Event

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson ’92 discussed her new memoir “Lovely One,” recounting her life journey from childhood to being the first Black female Supreme Court justice, at a Thursday evening event in Sanders Theatre.

The talk — which was jointly hosted by the Harvard Book Store and the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research — was moderated by Harvard Radcliffe Institute Dean Tomiko Brown-Nagin.

Jackson, a former member of Harvard’s Board of Overseers, began the event by reading an excerpt from her book’s preface, describing the day she was sworn in as the 116th justice of the Supreme Court and the historical significance of her signing a Bible belonging to former Supreme Court justice John Marshall Harlan — who dissented in Plessy v. Ferguson.

“Here I was, affixing my signature to his Bible in black fountain pen ink, only one generation after my mother and father had experienced the spirit-crushing effects of racial segregation in housing, schooling and transportation,” Jackson read. “Their daughter was standing on the threshold of history, the embodiment of our ancestors’ dreams.”

“Lovely One,” the title of Jackson’s memoir, is the English translation of her African given name “Ketanji Onyika,” chosen by her mother.

Jackson discussed how her book goes beyond her life story to the struggles of her grandparents and parents “in the Jim Crow South in Florida,” mentioning how her parents helped her build self-confidence as a child and for pushing her “to do all the things that they didn’t get to do.”

Before making history in the Supreme Court, Jackson talked about the many stages of her life during which she had to venture into what was uncharted territory for her family — in particular, her first year at Harvard.

Touching on the “imposter syndrome” she felt during her first year as an undergraduate, Jackson explained what it was like to transition to Harvard from a large public school environment and feeling homesickness.

“I was feeling very much like a fish out of water,” she said.

It was Michael J. Sandel’s course Gen Ed 1200: “Justice: Ethical Reasoning in Polarized Times” — which relaunched in fall 2024 — that helped her feel a sense of belonging at the College, Jackson said.

“Doing well in that class was really one of the things that helped me to see that maybe I could cut it here,” Jackson said.

Jackson went on to recall a student living in her dorm who hung a Confederate flag from his window — an incident that was disturbing to herself and many other African American students.

“What we needed to do was make sure that we were still going to class, that we were still doing our work, that we were still doing well,” she said. “That would be the best way to actually combat the kind of circumstance that we were confronting.”

During the talk, Jackson also shared her appreciation for meeting students from different backgrounds on campus — including her husband, who she met sophomore year in a historical studies class.

“I think he’s seventh generation Harvard with relatives coming over on the Mayflower,” Jackson said. “I mean, a totally different animal, but we shared a lot of the same values, and we were interested in the same classes.”

Twenty six years after graduating from Harvard Law School, Jackson became the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court — an accomplishment that came with challenges.

“It is a burden in the sense that you worry an enormous amount about making a mistake, about doing something that would lead people to believe that other people like you can’t do this job,” she said. “But, I’ve been the first in other circumstances, or one of a few, and so I think I’m sort of prepared.”

“I’ve always been the kind of person who just feels like ‘Okay, well, people think I can’t do this. I’ll show them,’” Jackson said.

—Staff writer Annabel M. Yu can be reached at annabel.yu@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @annabelmyu.