Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson kicked off her book tour in New York City!
Justice Jackson sat down with Gayle King to discuss her new memoir “The Lovely One.” In the book, she talks about when she fell in love with law, more.
It was reported that fans lined up around the block to witness history. Some of those in attendance included Jackson’s friends and her husband. During their sit-down, King and Jackson joked and sang a song from the hit movie, “The Wiz.”
Justice Jackson expressed how she felt about the book and the support from fans. “It has been overwhelming but exciting and just wonderful to get such a great response to the book with so many people supporting me who haven’t even read it!”
Gayle King reminded the audience that they were there to get to know more about Ketanji Brown Jackson. Jackson spoke about the memoir’s title, in which she revealed that her name means “lovely one.”
“My aunt was in a Peace Corps in Africa when I was born… my parents grew up in the segregated south and I was in 1970 which was five years after the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act and my parents really saw my birth as an opportunity,” she said.
She went on to speak on how she got into law, although both of her parents were teachers. However, her father did have an interest in law. “My parents never spoke to me baby talk, they always talked to me in full sentences and I remember some of my earliest memories are sitting in the little kitchen table, my dad has his law books and he’s studying and I have my coloring books and I’m sitting with him and I never thought there was anything else you were supposed to do then go to law school,” Jackson said.
Jackson continued to speak about a moment that helped shape her passion and ethic as a child. “I loved to float on my back, this was at a backyard pool party and I remember Motown blasting and I looked and I’m not within reach of the side and I started to panic, and I sink to the bottom of the pool,”
She said that she was rescued but was disappointed for not saving herself because she knew how to swim. “I say in the book, from then on even if afraid, I would swim.”
Ketanji Brown Jackson’s memoir is out now.