PRESS RELEASE – Wesley United Methodist Church Lounge was the setting for the October Taine Club meeting. Hostess Karen Babb created festive Halloween decorations.
President Vicki Rathbun led a short business meeting. Secretary and Treasurer reports were shared and members were encouraged to support the levy renewal for the Williams County Public Library.
The program was led by Karen Deemer with a book review and discussion of Lovely One by Ketanji Brown-Jackson, the first female Black American Supreme Court Justice.
Her first and middle names, Ketanji Onyika are African meaning “Lovely One.” She was raised in Miami, Florida, by parents who were both teachers, educated at historically black colleges, and wanted her to take pride in her heritage.
At an early age, she wanted to realize her dreams and honor her legacy after hearing stories of the parents and grandparents breaking barriers in the segregated south.
Ketanji loved drama and debate, was an oratory champion and senior class president in high school, and graduated from Harvard Law School, where she was editor of the Harvard Law Review.
After graduation, she clerked in Washington DC in the District Courts and U.S. Court of Appeals, worked in private practice, was an assistant federal public defender, and clerked for Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.
As a public defender, she won uncommon victories against the government that shortened or erased lengthy prison terms.
Brown-Jackson tells what it took to advance in the legal profession when most of the people in power didn’t look like her. She also had to reconcile a demanding career with joys and sacrifices of marriage and motherhood.
In 1996, she married surgeon Patrick Jackson, whom she met at Harvard. He is a descendant of Continental Congress delegate Jonathan Jackson and is related to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. The couple has two daughters.
When Stephen Breyer retired from the Supreme Court, President Joe Biden nominated her to be an associate justice of the Supreme Court and she was confirmed and sworn in June 30, 2022. Her journey resonates with dreamers everywhere, especially those who have outsized ambitions.
The book is praised as inspiring with themes of resilience, ambition, candor with vulnerability and focus of family perseverance. Pictured above is Karen Babb, Karen Deemer, Vicki Rathbun.