NEW YORK — Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has made history again. This time, however, the first Black woman named to the nation's highest court didn't do it in the courtroom.
Instead, she took the stage on Broadway as part of a "historic" walk-on performance in the jukebox musical "& Juliet." It happened Saturday, Dec. 14 at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre in New York City.
This role made Jackson the first Supreme Court justice to appear on stage in a Broadway production, according to the musical.
Appearing on Broadway has been a dream of Jackson's, according to her memoir "Lovely One."
Playbill quoted an excerpt of her memoir, where she reportedly said her love of theatre made its way into her application to Harvard, writing, "I, a Miami girl from a modest background with an unabashed love of theatre, dreamed of one day ascending to the highest court in the land—and I had said so in one of my supplemental application essays."
"I expressed that I wished to attend Harvard as I believed it might help me 'to fulfill my fantasy of becoming the first Black, female Supreme Court justice to appear on a Broadway stage," she concluded.
Decades later, Jackson's "fantasy" became a reality. It began in 2022 when the Florida native was sworn in as the first Black female justice in the Supreme Court's history, taking the title of 104th associate justice. She filled the role of retiring Justice Stephen Breyer.
When she joined the bench, she was just the third Black justice — after Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas — and sixth woman. She is one of four women on the bench, including Sonia Sotomayor, Elana Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett.
Fast forward to 2024 when Jackson stepped onto the Broadway stage. "Justice served," the musical wrote on social media.
