In a recent interview on the podcast IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recounted an anecdote involving her father, Johnny Brown, and her white husband, Patrick Jackson. In the exchange, the high court justice gleefully recalled her father’s involvement with black power extremist groups.
“And so he tells a story about how he sat down with them in the den and said, I’ve been dating your daughter for six years, as you know, and I’m really interested in asking her to marry me. And my dad was like, well. You know, back when I was in the Black Power movement, you would not have been caught dead in my house, not to mention, you know, asking for my daughter’s hand,” Jackson recalled.
“My one and only. He said, but I see how you have treated her. I know that you love her. And my mother said, I have two questions. Two questions. Do you believe in God? And do you love my daughter? And he answered both of them in the affirmative. And she said, you have my blessing.”
This is the sole publicly detailed reference by Jackson to her father’s participation in the Black Power movement.
Kentaji Brown Jackson says her White husband “wouldn’t be caught dead” in her Dad’s house when he was “in the Black Power movement.” pic.twitter.com/KbeMvREbgt
— johnny maga (@johnnymaga) July 30, 2026
Johnny Brown worked as a public school teacher before attending law school at the University of Miami when Jackson was a young child. He later served as an attorney for the Miami-Dade County Public Schools, eventually becoming the district’s chief attorney.
The Black Power movement of the mid-to-late 1960s and early 1970s included extremist factions that rejected nonviolence and integration in favor of racial separatism, revolutionary Marxism, and armed confrontation. Its most prominent militant organization, the Black Panther Party, openly called for the killing of police officers (“off the pigs”), stockpiled weapons, and engaged in repeated shootouts with law enforcement.
Multiple Panther members participated in murders, robberies, and other criminal violence. The identified the group as one of the greatest internal security threats to the United States, citing its advocacy of guerrilla warfare and attacks on government authority.
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