September 16th 2023.
Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recently shared an empowering message with Americans during the 60th anniversary memorial of the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. She highlighted the importance of facing the uncomfortable truths about the history of violence against Black Americans.
Justice Jackson, the first Black woman to serve on America’s highest Court, spoke out against the tendency of state leaders like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to attempt to sanitize history by removing parts that may be uncomfortable for them.
“If we are going to continue to move forward as a nation, we cannot allow concerns about discomfort to displace knowledge, truth or history. It is certainly the case that parts of this country’s story can be hard to think about,” Jackson said.
Her comments come at a time when Alabama’s Republican leaders are seeking to recreate a congressional map that a lower court has already said denied Black voters political determination. This was following a Supreme Court ruling in June 2023 that set out that the Voting Rights Act was enacted to protect Black voters from political retaliation.
Jackson has consistently been a voice of reason when it comes to legal interpretations of her conservative colleagues on the Court. In her dissent of the Affirmative Action case earlier in 2023, she argued that America’s long and unfortunate history with regard to its unequal treatment of Black citizens could not be divorced from its unwillingness to acknowledge the atrocities of the past largely perpetuated on lines of race.
“It would be deeply unfortunate if the Equal Protection Clause actually demanded this perverse, a historical, and counterproductive outcome. To impose this result in that Clause’s name when it requires no such thing, and to thereby obstruct our collective progress toward the full realization of the Clause’s promise, is truly a tragedy for us all,” she wrote.
The bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church also claimed the lives of two Black boys, Virgil and Johnny, in the aftermath of the tragedy. DeJuana Thompson, president of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, spoke to NBC News about the significance of this.
“While the bombing happened that morning, their deaths that afternoon were the residual effects of the terror. Those individuals who exacted that terror upon Virgil and Johnny, they were emboldened by what happened that day,” Thompson said.
Justice Jackson’s strong words and her presence at the memorial of the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church were a powerful reminder that we must confront our uncomfortable truths in order to move forward as a nation. It is clear that her appointment to the highest court in the United States has been an inspiration to many.
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