Born in Washington D.C., to school teacher parents and growing up in Miami-Dade County, Fla., Jackson built a path to greatness beginning with several milestones leading up to her greatest accomplishments, including graduating from Harvard Law School and working as a clerk for the U.S. Supreme Court. But she also has a lengthy legal career, having served on the U.S. Sentencing Commission, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and as an assistant federal public defender. All of this took place before she became the first Black woman to be confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022.

After her confirmation, she said: “We have come a long way toward perfecting our union. In my family, it took just one generation to go from segregation to the Supreme Court of the United States."