From a distance, it might have looked like a modern piece of gold and brass costume jewelry Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wore around her neck on Monday. But the bold necklace Justice Jackson adorned herself with on the opening day of the high court’s new term is actually made of intricately coiled South Carolina Sweetgrass and exemplifies the artistry of the Gullah-Geeche people who used their roots in West Africa to create a distinct culture in the South Carolina Lowcountry.
Our country’s first and only Black woman justice’s decision to openly honor her ancestors and her family’s wondrous trajectory from enslavement to the Supreme Court speaks volumes — especially as the current administration tries mightily to minimize or altogether erase the history of slavery and its lasting impacts.
Talk about statement jewelry.
Justice Jackson was given the necklace during her recent visit to the International African American Museum in Charleston.
Justice Jackson was given the necklace during her recent visit to the International African American Museum in Charleston, a stunning structure located at the site of what was Gadsden’s Wharf, the entry point for as many as 40% of the captured Africans sold into slavery in North America.
The sweetgrass weaving technique, originated with enslaved Africans using fan shaped baskets to winnow threshed rice or to separate chaff from grain. Over time, they began creating woven vessels to carry food and even babies — and using the technique to create items more obviously meant as art. The designs in the tight coils of the sweetgrass straw convey stories of survival and a culture unbroken by bondage.
“While touring the museum, I learned about the tradition of sweet grass weaving, a cultural practice and art that came from Africa and continues to this day in certain communities in North and South Carolina, Georgia and Florida,” Jackson said in an email exchange through her office.
“As a descendant of enslaved people, I was very interested in this weaving tradition and its significance to the community of my ancestors. I was honored when the museum gifted me with this beautiful handcrafted sweetgrass necklace,” she also said in the email.
Jackson told me she planned to wear the necklace in court “in recognition of my background and in gratitude for the opportunity that I have to serve our country now.”
Photographers are not generally allowed in the Supreme Court chambers, so there were no immediate pictures of Justice Jackson wearing the necklace, but sources at the court confirm that she indeed wore the sweetgrass necklace over her robe Monday as she indicated she would.
Justice Jackson isn’t the first justice to use neckwear to make a statement. Referring to Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the first two women on the Supreme Court, Jackson told me over the weekend, “I have taken inspiration from Justices O’Connor and Ginsburg, who wore beautiful collars over their robes.” She said, “It livened things up and made them stand out. I love jewelry, and have collected various costume necklaces over the years. I thought it would be interesting to wear them outside of my robe, partly as a tribute to them and partly as an expression of my own style and individuality as a jurist.”
In January, during President Donald Trump’s inauguration, Justice Jackson wore a judicial collar made of cowrie shells over her robe — along with matching earrings. Cowrie shells, which were sometimes used as currency, symbolize resilience, femininity and protection from evil in some African cultures. Adorning herself with cowrie shells on a day when the world would be watching the inauguration ceremony set social media on fire with all kinds of interpretations about the deeper meaning behind her choice. But Jackson herself never offered a public explanation.
Karen Alston, who worked closely with her husband, the acclaimed fifth-generation sweetgrass artist Corey Alston, designed the necklace Justice Jackson wore Monday. She said she chose a design that mirrored the ornate collars that would have been worn by women in West African royalty. The fronds of sweetgrass used for the necklace were harvested from the ancestors’ memorial garden at the International African American Museum (IAAM), an architecturally stunning institution located in the spot where men, women and children would have been on view for inspection and sale in America, after enduring the horrors of the Middle Passage.
As to the message Justice Jackson was sending wearing that jewelry on the opening term of the session, she was guarded in her words and said simply that she wanted to “recognize” her history.
Though Jackson doesn’t have familial connection to Low Country Gullah culture, there appears to be a link to Charleston. A Black man named John Greene who is believed to be an early ancestor of Justice Jackson reportedly disembarked from a ship that had traveled from Trinidad to Charleston. According to a story passed down through generations of her family, Greene, who landed in Charleston a free man, was captured and sold into slavery.
Ketanji Brown met her husband, Patrick Jackson, when they were Harvard students. She has repeatedly described them as an “unlikely pair,” not just because she’s Black and he’s white. Though Justice Jackson’s parents were solidly middle class, her ancestral line includes slavery, sharecropping and struggle. Her husband’s family line includes forebearers who arrived on the Mayflower, someone who signed the Constitution, and at least 30 Harvard graduates. It also includes several slaveholders.
“Every male ancestor of Patrick’s maternal grandfather over the age of 21 alive in 1850 or 1860 was a slave owner,” Christopher Child with the New England Historic Genealogical Society in Boston, told The Washington Post in 2023.
Through her union with her husband, Justice Jackson has an opportunity to cast the collective gaze backward toward the complexities around the dual history of slavery in America and the reasons it causes so much discomfort as we consider the country’s evolution from slavery and slave holding.
On so many levels, Jackson’s life is a shimmering example of America’s march toward progress. Her education. Her accomplishments. Her marriage. Her family. And the way she chooses to show up in the world. And one of the things that is remarkable is that she chooses to show up in public spaces — traveling the country on book tours, meeting with students and occasionally visiting museums. Supreme Court justices typically lead more cloistered lives.
“Being in the company of a justice who truly appreciates and values history and culture and with such care reflects her immense understanding of its importance,” Malika Pryor, the chief learning and engagement officer who gave Justice Jackson a private tour of the IAAM this summer, told me.
On so many levels, Jackson’s life is a shimmering example of America’s march toward progress.
She said Justice Jackson constantly peppered her with pointed and attentive questions. Pryor, who is a lawyer herself, noted that law by necessity requires a constant attention to life’s rear view mirror, sometimes including the inconvenient truths we might prefer not to see. In law, it’s referred to as precedent, ever present for context and deeper understanding.
It should be said that the simple act of recognizing history more than eight months into an administration, when we are in a period of willful and aggressive erasure, is an act of both courage and grace. It is also a demonstration that fashion is not always frivolous. It can be a vehicle for agency, legacy and history. It can hold a mirror up to society and spark dialogue, curiosity and introspection.
It is often said that successful people stand on their ancestors’ shoulders. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson walked into chambers Monday and allowed the ancestors, in a proverbial sense, to rest atop hers.