US Senator Cory Booker at hearings on nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as US Supreme Court Associate Justice
The presentation made on March 23, 2022 by U.S. Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey in support and defense of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson was a master class in political oratory.
Booker took the members of the United States Senate and everyone watching on TV on the journey that so many African Americans have had to make on their way to success and achievement in this country. He employed a powerful point of reference which is the idea of “loving a country that does not love you back.”
That is something that so many African Americans have struggled with for centuries. It was a factor whether they served in the armed forces, or sought to hold public office, or represented the country in the Olympic Games. They loved and served a country that did not love them back.
It was true when they believed in the American Dream that if they work hard and follow all the rules they can aspire to achieve at the highest level of their ability, only to be held back due to prejudice or discrimination or bias.
Both Cory Booker and Ketanji Brown Jackson have wrestled with this dilemma. In a previous speech, Booker remembers when some people in the various Senate Office buildings mistook him and fellow Senator Tim Scott [R-SC] for custodians or even trespassers rather than elected member of the United States Senate.
Booker called out his Republican Senate colleagues for the arrogant and demeaning ways in which they behaved during the confirmation hearings of Judge Jackson who has been nominated to serve on the United States Supreme Court. Booker reminded everyone of Harriet Tubman who served in the Union army in defense of the country that had allowed her to be held in bondage. He talked about Langston Hughes who said, “America has never been America to me, and yet I swear this oath - America will be.” He talked about Constance Baker Motley who, on her way to becoming the first African American woman to become a federal judge, was called a Communist sympathizer by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee who were attempting to keep her from assuming that position.
Booker talked about people like himself at Stanford and Yale and Judge Jackson with two degrees from Harvard who were made to feel that they did not belong and did not deserve to be in those spaces.
As I listened, I kept thinking about the Maya Angelou poem, “And Still I Rise”, and the recurring theme of the poem’s title.
Despite Jim Crow laws, the brutality of lynch mobs, the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Medgar Evers, and the death of four young girls killed in the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, “still we rise.”
Senators like Ted Cruz from Texas, Josh Hawley of Missouri, John Kennedy of Louisiana, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Tom Tillis of North Carolina, and Lindsay Graham of South Carolina did their best to display the racism, demagoguery, and arrogance that too many white people display toward African Americans no matter their education and achievement.
“And still we rise.”
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson
It was in the face of all that disrespect toward Judge Jackson that Senator Booker confronted his colleagues about their conduct toward the nominee. He reminded Judge Jackson of the journey of life of her parents and their common ancestors that led to her being one step away from a seat on the United States Supreme Court. “And still we rise.”
When speaking with Senator Alex Badilla of California, Judge Jackson had offered a one-word explanation for how she has arrived at this moment in her life. She said an older African American woman she encountered during her first year at Harvard College told her to persevere.
That is what African Americans have been doing since their forced arrival on these shores over 400 years ago. Booker reminded Jackson how she had persevered in the face of white resentment and the low expectations many white people have concerning what African Americans can achieve. “And still we rise.”
Within one month, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson will be sworn in as the first African American woman to serve on the nation’s highest court. She has persevered! “And still we rise.”
U. S. Senator Cory Booker and soon-to-be Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson took center stage on the American political scene today. “And still we rise!”
Referring to Harriet Tubman, Booker said the North Star was a harbinger of hope for enslaved people running to freedom. Booker then said that Judge Jackson was his harbinger of hope.
“And still we rise.”
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The Rev. Marvin A. McMickle, pastor emeritus of Antioch Baptist Church in Cleveland, Ohio, retired in 2019 as president of Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School in Rochester, New York, where he had served since 2011.
