A clock, a mural, a petition: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's chambers tell her story

WASHINGTON − Thurgood Marshall's clock. Clarence Gideon's petition. Lucy's portrait.

To understand Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson , look at what she has chosen to display around her.

The first Black woman on the Supreme Court has filled her sun-splashed chambers with artwork and artifacts that illuminate her history and that of the nation. Her curation reveals those she honors and those she credits with her unprecedented rise, and it illustrates the judicial principles she prizes.

"To make sure that everyone is clear that we are all a part of the American experience, that all of our backgrounds, as different as they are, can be reflected and celebrated in something like the Supreme Court is very important," she said in an interview with USA TODAY.

That's a theme of her memoir, "Lovely One," published this month by Random House, and a message from her chambers. The paintings she displays by Black artists, for instance, are "certainly meaningful to me as an African American who has had a distinct set of experiences."

Indeed, the portrait that hangs over her desk, by William H. Johnson, carries an echo of one of her enslaved ancestors.

At times, her office can also be a sort of refuge from the fierce scrutiny and momentous stakes that come with a Supreme Court appointment, especially given that she is, more often than not, at odds with the court's conservative majority on divisive cases. In the last term, for example, Jackson was in the minority in 59% of the cases decided by a split 6-3 or 5-4 vote, according to statistics compiled by Adam Feldman and Jake S. Truscott for the Empirical SCOTUS blog .

A sense of place clearly matters to Jackson. Her 405-page memoir is filled with passages describing in detail not only the people who have made a difference in her life but also the places: The Liberty City apartment in Miami where her father was raised. The quiet courtyard near her home where she encountered a childhood brush with racism. Her freshman dorm room at Harvard.

And the Supreme Court itself on the morning she was sworn in on June 30, 2022. In the book's opening, she notes "the plain wooden door that would soon open into the grand West Conference Room." The bright lights that briefly blinded her. The rows of chairs that she then could see to her right and left, filled with family members and new colleagues. "I stood in front of a marble fireplace, an American flag on its pole draped behind me," she writes.

In an interview in her chambers last week, she described the backstory behind five items she has chosen to show to others − and to see herself, every day, at her new job.

Thurgood Marshall's clock

Marshall was the first African American justice on the Supreme Court, appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1967. Marshall already had been the most prominent lawyer arguing the cause of civil rights before the high court, winning 29 of 32 cases. One of those was the 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, rejecting the separate-but-equal doctrine used to defend segregation in public schools.

Sitting on the mantle of her fireplace is Marshall's small office clock, a rounded wood casing encircling the white-and-gold face. Jackson called it the most important artifact in her office.

"I feel a connection to him through it in a lot of ways because he was such an important figure," she said. He "opened the door to African Americans being able to fully participate in our society." That includes her, she added. "It reminds me of Brown versus the Board of Education, which is the reason why I'm here, for sure."

The clock still works. When she glances up from her desk, it is the way she tracks the time, every day.

More: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson can throw a punch. Literally.

Lucy's portrait

Over Jackson's desk is a portrait that was painted by Johnson in 1939 or 1940. An artist of the Harlem Renaissance, he died in obscurity in 1970 only to be recognized as a major American artist today. More than a thousand of his paintings are now part of the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Supreme Court justices, like other top government officials, are allowed to borrow artwork from federal collections to display in their offices during their official tenure. When the curator of the Supreme Court was showing her works by African American artists, Jackson saw the simple portrait of a Black woman in a blue dress and a lace collar, calm and composed as she sat on a wooden stool, her hands clasp in her lap.

The title: "Lucy."

That name stopped her short. When Jackson had been nominated for the high court, some genealogists set out to detail her family's origins, no easy task for the descendent of slaves. Before the Civil War, they were often given their owners' names or no last name at all. For Jackson, one of the single names that had appeared in her ancestry was a woman named Lucy.

"When I saw this picture that was also Lucy," Jackson recalled, "I said, 'Yeah, she's coming with me.'"

More: Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has a lot to say - but not about the court

Clarence Gideon's petition

The petition to the Supreme Court was written in pencil on prison letterhead.

“It makes no difference how old I am or what color I am or what church I belong too if any. The question is I did not get a fair trial.  The question is very simple. I requested the court to appoint me a attorney and the court refused. All countrys try to give there citizens a fair trial and see to it that they have counsel.”

Clarence Gideon , a drifter with a long arrest record had been convicted of stealing beer, soda and pocket change from a pool hall in Florida.

His handwritten appeal led to a unanimous 1963 ruling in Gideon v. Wainwright that all criminal defendants have a right to counsel.

Moved by his case when she studied it in law school, Jackson would experience first-hand how influential Gideon had been when she became a federal public defender.

Now, archival copies of his petition hang in her chambers as a reminder of “what is so great and extraordinary about this country.”

“Here we had an indigent person who didn't have representation, and who hand wrote his petition to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court accepted it,” said Jackson, the first former federal public defender to serve on the high court . “And as a result of his case, we had a sea change in the way in which representation happens for poor people.”

The petition also shows, she said, that “everyone can contribute” to helping the nation live up to its constitutional promises. “You never know what cases are going to become significant,” she said, “and the Supreme Court is part of that story.”

`Maybe she'll be a lawyer'

Jackson’s most enduring image of herself – sitting with her coloring books next to her father at the kitchen table as Johnny Brown bends over his law books – comes to life in a mural commemorating Jackson’s confirmation that animates a vibrant, multicultural neighborhood in Washington.

A pink arrow on a purple background points from her father up to an adult Jackson in her judicial robes.

Brown, who was one of a handful of Black students at the University of Miami’s law school in the early 1970s, would discuss with his daughter the cases he was studying, taking the 4-year-old’s opinions seriously.

“My parents always talked to me in full sentences and were really interested in investing in my potential,” she said. “And I think even then, my father thought, `Maybe she'll be a lawyer.’”

The seed of an even more ambitious dream was planted by an article Jackson read, shortly before her 12th birthday, about Constance Baker Motley, the first Black woman to argue a case before the Supreme Court and the first to be appointed to the federal judiciary.

The two shared a birthday but the 49 years between their births “made all the difference in terms of this appointment,” Jackson said of her seat on the Supreme Court.

“She absolutely could have done this job, but didn't have the opportunity in her time,” Jackson said.

In the mural, Jackson figuratively rests on Motley’s shoulders.

After Jackson’s first term on the court, her law clerks gave her a mini replica of the mural they had commissioned from the artist, Nia Keturah Calhoun.

“I'm the first Black woman on the court, but not the first Black woman who could have done this job,” Jackson said, “and so I feel very entrusted with the responsibility to do my very best.”

'From the Fields of America to the Halls of Justice'

Jackson knew from the start that she wanted to display the work of Black artists in her chambers.

"I just think it's important to feature all sorts of people who have contributed to the art and culture here in this country," she said. "And so I wanted to make sure that there was representation from African American artists, just like other artists who are featured here" in the Supreme Court.

She had admired artist Lonnie Holley and saw his work in a 2022-2023 National Gallery exhibition, "Called to Create: Black Artists of the American South." Through a mutual friend, she invited him to visit her chambers.

"Here I am standing in the chamber of a great woman," Hollie told USA TODAY, recalling the moment. "Not a man, a great woman that had achieved and come out of Florida and all the way from Miami, the lowest part of the South, all the way to the Supreme Court, and I'm thinking, `Wow, OK.'"

Rather than have her choose one of his paintings to borrow, he offered to create one designed specifically for her and sized for the place she wanted to hang it. It would face the entrance to her chambers, where every visitor would see it as they entered.

The painting depicts a mass of overlapping profiles of faces looking in every direction, with ribbons of orange and yellow over black, white and gray.

"Colorful, like the orange groves themselves, like the field, having the different colors, pigmentation, all of that had to match, along with faces of faces and faces and faces," he said, describing it. "The faces looking this way, that way, up and down, some faces that had already been buried, some faces looking up. Some faces look like they are still praising the opportunity to just be in life."

He titled it "From the Fields of America to the Halls of Justice."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: A clock, a mural, a petition: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's chambers tell her story