American artist Nia Keturah Calhoun immortalizes here the face of the first black woman chosen to serve on the Supreme Court, Ketanji Brown Jackson. The choice of the eminent Afro-descendant jurist was confirmed by the Senate. It took 232 years before a black woman reached this position, a big step in the history of this country deeply divided by racial violence and subjected to the yoke of segregation for decades.
“I wanted to celebrate this momentous occasion while honoring a really, really nuanced past, right. A lot of the mural is very dark because it represents the fact that we had to go through a long period of oppression so that a black woman can sit on the highest court in the land. But there’s a rising sun from the east shining directly on her because it’s a brand new day.”
Will the appointment of a black woman to the Supreme Court have major consequences for justice in the United States of America? It is still too early to judge, but for the most optimistic African-Americans, the The arrival of Ketanji Brown Jackson already marks the beginning of their representation in the upper echelons of the country.
“If you look at the two green lines behind me, one represents the east coast of America and the other represents the west coast of Africa and the journey that she and her family have been on both figuratively and literally to get to where she is. She talked about going from segregation to the Supreme Court in a single generation. So there’s a lot of sharp, jagged shapes that represent the glass ceiling that she had to smash to get to where she is.”
It should be noted that two black men have already acceded to this function at the Supreme Court. Of the 115 judges who have so far served on the Supreme Court, there have only been five women, Ketanji Brown Jackson being the first black woman. She will replace magistrate Stephen Breyer, who will retire in June.