Weekly Reflection: “A Change Is Gonna Come”

During the struggles of the modern civil rights movement, the popular singer Sam Cooke released a song that became one of the musical legacies of the movement. Its title is “A Change Is Gonna Come.” That title is especially appropriate for a major change that is likely to happen for the Supreme Court of the United States. Confirmation hearings are being held this week for Judge Ketjani Brown Jackson. When confirmed, she will become the first Black woman justice in the Court’s history. In this same month of March 165 years ago, the Supreme Court issued one of its most infamous and racist decisions in the 1857 Dred Scott case. The first video posted below summarizes that decision. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney of Maryland wrote the majority opinion including the following shameful words that have gone down in history:

“In the opinion of the court, the legislation and histories of the times, and the language used in the Declaration of Independence, show, that neither the class of persons who had been imported as slaves, nor their descendants, whether they had become free or not, were then acknowledged as a part of the people, nor intended to be included in the general words used in that memorable instrument…They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.”

The decision reflected in these words justified both the brutal practice of slavery and the dehumanization of Black people. Even after the Civil War, such thinking led to the oppression of legal segregation and violence against those who challenged that “way of life.” In light of this history, the nomination and confirmation of Judge Ketjani Brown Jackson represent a major affirmation of our nation’s founding principle that all people are created equal. Yet our history also reminds us that the struggle for true equality is ongoing. The second video posted below focuses on one of Judge Brown Jackson’s mentors, the first woman to serve as a Federal Court Judge, Constance Baker Motley. She was appointed by President Johnson in 1966 after being a leader in working for civil rights through the legal system along with colleagues such as Thurgood Marshall. Taken together, the stories of these two Black women judges bear witness to the inherent equality of all people made in the image of God and the ongoing struggle to call our nation to live into this core principle regardless of the obstacles to it in every generation.