Here is a perSISTERS design for our newest Supreme Court Justice who is the first Black woman to be appointed to be a judge on the highest court in the United States.

DESIGN NOTES

I tell people I don’t do “firsts” unless there is a particular power or message involved. So I wasn’t inclined to do a piece for Ketanji Brown Jackson just because she will be our first Black woman Supreme Court justice. However, I have received an extraordinary number of requests so I know there is something important going on there. Granted, I live and work in an area with more lawyers than any other location in the U.S., and a substantial number of African American people. But still.

I try to stay positive in my perSISTERS works so I will not use space here to address in any detail the bizarre—but not unexpected—performance of Republican Senators during the confirmation hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court. I will say that Jackson gave an impeccable performance during this ordeal. She held to her message on her professional principles, principles that should not be controversial: the rule of law and equal protection under the law.

The main message that I find to foreground in a perSISTERS print is rarely a direct quote. Here I have woven in text from Jackson’s recent speeches, but the large message I found, RISE, is not the obvious one you will see in other works made for Ketanji Brown Jackson. The most obvious message is PERSEVERE, which is the explicit message she has said she would give to young people. (See Jackson answer Senator Padilla’s question here: https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/judge-jackson-s-advice-to-students-facing-challenges-persevere-136102981509). 

The thing is, all of the persisters are who they are because they have persevered. The series is pretty much named for that. I have three print designs that use the words, “Nevertheless she persisted.” Also, as a writer and typographer, I just don’t like the word “persevere.” I don’t like the sound, and I don’t like how it looks. So I studied the contexts within her speeches and I found some things that were more interesting, for me. 

Let’s look at the context of Jackson’s “persevere” message. This is a condensed quote, and it appears on the print. She is answering Padilla’s question, What would you say to all those young Americans, the most diverse in our nation’s history, what would you say if they doubt they can achieve the same great heights that you have:

I will tell them what an anonymous person said to me once, as I was walking through Harvard Yard my freshman year. … I was really questioning, do I belong here? Can I make it in this environment? And I was walking through the Yard in the evening, and a Black woman I did not know was passing me on the sidewalk. And she looked at me and I guess she knew how I was feeling. She leaned over as we crossed and said, “Persevere.”

For me, the great message in this statement is that in a crucial time in her life, it was the empathic statement of a stranger that gave Jackson some courage, enough so that she never forgot this encounter. I’m sure Jackson had been told to persevere previously, but it was this context that gave it particular weight. It was a gift. A gift from a person with similar ancestry and experience. And in this hearing, answering Mr. Padilla’s question, Ketanji Brown Jackson is re-gifting that message. 

I tried to think of a way to put this idea into the one or two big words I put on the prints, but it is too complicated. So I used imagery to communicate this. The pattern in the background is often called the “flower of life” and to me it communicates interconnectedness. (I have used this motif in scarf designs to communicate the way Virginia Woolf intersects the consciousnesses of her characters in her novel, Mrs. Dalloway.)

Ketanji Brown Jackson returns to the gifting idea in the speech she gave at the White House after her confirmation. An excerpt appears in the background on the print. The larger message she is trying to convey is that she is situated in history and history is showing that anything is possible in America (“We have come a long way toward perfecting our union.”) She speaks about how, even though she worked very hard, she could not be a role model herself if she hadn’t been standing on the shoulders of her own role models. She is speaking about the monumental achievements—in just a few generations—of African Americans in this country. Near the end of the speech, she quotes from the poem, “And Still I Rise,”  an amazing poem about Black female persistence and power. This is from the transcript the White House published online:

To be sure, I have worked hard to get to this point in my career, and I have now achieved something far beyond anything my grandparents could’ve possibly ever imagined.  But no one does this on their own.  The path was cleared for me so that I might rise to this occasion. 

And in the poetic words of Dr. Maya Angelou, I do so now, while “Bringing the gifts…my ancestors gave.”  (Applause.)  I –“I am the dream and the hope of the slave.”  (Applause.)

So this is where the message “RISE” comes from. It is a force of justice through history and a gift that can be shared. Also, it’s the thing you do when a judge walks into that room that is dedicated to the ceremonies of justice.

A NOTE ON THE COLORS

The color harmonies in this piece are based on the color of the spines of the law books appearing behind Ms. Jackson in the photo referenced (and changed) that can be found here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:10.18.2019,_Ketanji_Jackson.jpg   released under a creative commons license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en  The photographer has no responsibility for my artwork.

MORE LINKS

Excerpt: https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/in-ketanji-brown-jackson-s-success-a-lesson-in-what-is-possible-in-a-democracy-137363525966

Full White House speech: https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2022/04/08/ketanji-brown-jackson-supreme-court-celebration-full-speech-sot-vpx.cnn

“And Still I Rise” by Maya Angelou https://poets.org/poem/still-i-rise

. . .

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.

Ketanji Brown Jackson (born Ketanji Onyika Brown; September 14, 1970) is an American attorney and jurist who has served as a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit since 2021. She has been confirmed as the next associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Jackson received Senate confirmation on April 7, 2022. When she is sworn in she will be the first black woman to sit on the Supreme Court.

Born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Miami, Florida, Jackson attended Harvard University for college and law school, where she served as an editor of the Harvard Law Review. She began her legal career with three clerkships, including one with U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen Breyer. Prior to her elevation to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, she served as a district judge for the United States District Court for the District of Columbia from 2013 to 2021. Jackson was also vice chair of the United States Sentencing Commission from 2010 to 2014. Jackson worked in private legal practice from 2000 to 2003. From 2003 to 2005, she was an assistant special counsel to the United States Sentencing Commission. From 2005 to 2007, Jackson was an assistant federal public defender in Washington, D.C., where she handled cases before U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. From 2007 to 2010, Jackson was an appellate specialist at a law firm.

Based on Wikipedia