The first-ever Black woman to serve on the US Supreme Court has urged Americans to confront \u201cuncomfortable\u201d truths about the nation\u2019s past and its legacy of racist violence as she addressed a congregation recognising the 60th anniversary of a lethal act of white supremacist terror.<\/p>\n
US Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson\u2019s unsparing remarks from Birmingham, Alabama, on 15 September reflected on the Ku Klux Klan\u2019s bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church that killed four girls \u2014 11-year-old Denise McNair and 14-year-olds Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Addie Mae Collins \u2014 and galvanised a civil rights movement facing threats of racist violence.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we are going to continue to move forward as a nation, we cannot allow concerns about discomfort to displace knowledge, truth or history. It is certainly the case that parts of this country\u2019s story can be hard to think about,\u201d Ms Jackson said in prepared remarks to a church congregation, joining pastors and other officials commemorating the attack and its aftermath.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know that atrocities like the one we are memorialising today are difficult to remember and relive,\u201d she added. \u201cBut I also know that it is dangerous to forget them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Democratic US Rep Terri Sewell, Alabama\u2019s only Black member of Congress, hailed her district encompassing Birmingham, Selma and other southern civil rights landmarks as \u201cAmerica\u2019s civil rights district\u201d \u2014 one which is currently embroiled in a constitutional battle that has reached the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n
In a landmark ruling earlier this year, the Supreme Court determined that the state\u2019s Republican-drawn, gerrymandered congressional map discriminated against Black voters by packing most of the state\u2019s Black residents, who make up more than a quarter of the state\u2019s population and are overwhelmingly more likely to vote Democratic, into one single congressional district out of seven.<\/p>\n
Alabama state lawmakers were ordered to redraw the map, but defiant GOP leaders drafted a second map that largely maintained the status quo. Earlier this month, a three-judge federal court panel said that it is \u201cdeeply troubled\u201d that the state approved a map that it \u201creadily admits\u201d does not meet its obligations to the constitution.<\/p>\n
Justice Jackson was introduced on Friday by former US Senator Doug Jones, who successfully prosecuted two of the four men responsible for the attack \u2014 Thomas Blanton and Bobby Cherry \u2014 decades later, in 2001 and 2022, when he was a US attorney.<\/p>\n
Robert Chambliss was convicted on murder charges in 1977. Herman Cash died in 1994 and was never charged in connection with the attack.<\/p>\n
US Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson addresses an audience at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, on 15 September to commemorate the 60th anniversary of a Ku Klux Klan bombing that killed four Black children. <\/p>\n
(AP)<\/p>\n
In her remarks, Ms Jackson stressed \u201cwhat it\u2019s going to take\u201d to defend the \u201ccore constitutional values\u201d affirmed by previous generations in an ongoing fight for equal rights.<\/p>\n
\u201cPay careful attention to what we know: oppressors of every stripe, from the slave master to the dictator, have recognised for centuries that knowledge is a powerful tool,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have seen that once acquired it can be wielded, and once wielded it is transformative,\u201d she added. \u201cKnowledge is transformative and it frees them. The work of our time is maintaining that hard-earned freedom, and to do that, we need the truth, the whole truth, about our past. We must teach it to our children and preserve it for theirs.\u201d<\/p>\n
America must own \u201ceven the darkest parts of our past, understand them and vow never to repeat them,\u201d she added. \u201cWe must not shield our eyes. We must not shrink away lest we lose it all.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her address gestured at a sweeping effort among Republican officials and right-wing groups to restrict honest discussions of race and racism in classrooms across the country, from campaigns targeting libraries to dozens of state-level bills outlawing so-called \u201cwoke\u201d education and \u201ccritical race theory\u201d concepts, referring to a legal framework to examine systemic racism that opponents have invoked to broadly restrict discussion of social justice issues.<\/p>\n
The justice\u2019s remarks also follow a reported surge in hate crimes \u2014 which have steadily risen from year to year, including a 12 per cent spike from 2020 to 2021 \u2014 and a swell of right-wing violence and extremism-fuelled killings.<\/p>\n
Criminal cases targeting Donald Trump and efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election also strike at the heart of voter suppression efforts threatening a hard-fought right to vote, while a movement amplifying bogus conspiracy theories and false narratives that undermine voting rights continues to grip state legislatures and members of Congress.<\/p>\n
Kristen Clarke, the assistant US attorney for civil rights at the US Department of Justice, told the congregation that \u201cracially motivated hate crimes are a stain on our nation\u2019s history\u201d as she recommitted herself to \u201cvigorously defending civil rights in any way we can\u201d and to \u201cdispel the discord of hatred and prejudice.\u201d<\/p>\n
A sign outside Birmingham\u2019s 16th Street Baptist Church on 15 September as a congregation hears from US Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, among other US officials, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of a KKK bombing that killed four Black children. <\/p>\n
(AP)<\/p>\n
\u201cThe killing of the four little girls focused America\u2019s eyes on Birmingham, bringing into sharp clarity the injustices that sparked the Civil Rights Movement,\u201d Rep Sewell wrote in a column for Newsweek on 15 September to coincide with the anniversary of the church bombing. \u201cTheir premature and senseless deaths awakened the slumbering conscience of America and inspired generations to demand change.\u201d<\/p>\n
The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 \u201cproved that their sacrifice was not in vain,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday, as extremists seek to whitewash our history, rewrite our textbooks, and roll back our progress, it has never been more critical to ensure that the legacy of the four little girls lives on in America\u2019s story,\u201d Ms Sewell wrote.<\/p>\n
Should America fail to learn from its past, \u201cwe are doomed to repeat it,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The first-ever Black woman to serve on the US Supreme Court has urged Americans to confront \u201cuncomfortable\u201d truths about the nation\u2019s past and its legacy of racist violence as she addressed a congregation recognising the 60th anniversary of a lethal act of white supremacist terror. US Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson\u2019s unsparing remarks from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2423,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n