At Harvard, Ketanji Brown Jackson knew about a White student fighting to remove a Confederate flag. He is now her husband.
Ketanji Brown Jackson is the first Black woman to serve as a Supreme Court justice, but decades before, she was a Harvard student trying to find her way. That's when she met Patrick Jackson, a White classmate who joined an effort to have a Confederate flag removed from campus. He went on to become her husband.
In an interview with Gayle King for CBS Mornings to talk about her new book "Lovely One," the justice opened up about how she and Jackson met and navigated their interracial relationship.
"I love the backstory of your meeting. I already see the movie," King said.
Brown Jackson said she and her now-husband were in a class together called "Changing the Concept of Race in America," and started out as friends. But over time, she began to like him as something more.
However, Brown Jackson was worried about meeting his family. He grew up White and privileged and his grandmother had offered to pay for his medical schooling. She worried that after finding out he had a Black girlfriend, that generous offer would be taken off the table.
"I mean I was just nervous about the whole scenario. My parents had grown up in the South and segregation and, you know, this was an interracial relationship, which was unusual," she said.
Jackson reassured her it would work out.
"At one point he said, 'I choose you,' because I was worried that, you know, his grandmother had promised to pay for his medical school, and I was worried that it might mean that when she found out about me, she wouldn't do it," Brown Jackson said. "And he said, 'Even if I have to take a job or do something else, I choose you.'"
Brown Jackson called that "pretty extraordinary."
She also said her parents came around to support their relationship. But, as King pointed out, her father told her, "We trust Patrick, but this is America."
While Brown Jackson said it was scary at first to be in an interracial relationship, her parents realized she and her husband were right for each other and shared a lot of the same values.
The pair went on to marry in 1996 and have two daughters.
"Patrick believed and Patrick knew that this was going to happen for you," King said. "Talk about somebody who believed in you from the very beginning."
Jackson, in the studio for the CBS Mornings interview, wiped away tears watching his wife.
Brown Jackson shared another story from Harvard that stuck with her all these years. It was a short, one-word interaction with a stranger who passed her while walking down a path.
"Well, I was feeling really depressed at the time, you know, so many freshmen go through the, you know, imposter syndrome," she said, adding that she was not sure if she belonged at Harvard.
"And this woman passed me on the path and leaned over and she said, 'Persevere.' And then she kept going," she said. "I was like, wow. You know. It just really stuck with me. And started to change my view of what I was doing there."
After graduating from Harvard-Radcliffe in 1992 with a Bachelor's Degree in government, she went on to Harvard Law School, graduating in 1996. After working in private practice and three federal clerkships she served on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia from 2013 to 2021, until President Biden appointed her to the Supreme Court.
During her confirmation hearing, a photo of her husband and daughter Leila went viral. The teen stared proudly at her mom, who was about to become the first Black woman to serve on the nation's highest court.
King said the shot made her tear up.
"It was such a moment of pride. You didn't see it in that moment. But when you saw it, what did you think? It seemed to say so many things to me," King said.
"It did," Brown Jackson said. "So many people came up to me and talked about how that picture had moved them." She said realizing how proud her daughter was was a "wonderful thing."