Class of 1988 | Miami Palmetto Senior High School, Florida
Ketanji Brown Jackson is an attorney and the first Black woman to sit on the Supreme Court of the United States of America. She is also the first Supreme Court justice to have served as a public defender. Prior to her role on the Supreme Court, Jackson served as a judge for the United States District Court for the District of Columbia since 2013.
Born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Miami, Florida, Jackson joined speech and debate under coach, Fran Berger. “That was an experience that I can say without hesitation was the one activity that best prepared me for future success in law and in life,” Judge Jackson said in a lecture in 2017. “I learned how to reason and how to write, and I gained the self-confidence that can sometimes be quite difficult for women and minorities to learn at an early age.” Jackson placed sixth in Humorous Interpretation at the National Tournament in 1988.
Ketanji Brown Jackson, Attribution: File:Ketanji Brown Jackson at Loeb House (Harvard University, 2020).jpg: Rose Lincoln, Harvard Universityderivative work: Innisfree987, CC BY-SA 4.0