PINECREST, Fla. – Janese Fayson said Ketanji Brown Jackson is an inspiration. The Miami Palmetto Senior High School senior is months away from graduating from Jackson’s alma mater in Pinecrest.
Like Jackson, she is a member of the student council and stays busy with clubs and volunteering. She is also preparing to go to Syracuse University to major in management and communications.
“We are all super excited about it,” Janese said about Jackson’s future in the Supreme Court.
Janese said she is looking forward to the school’s pep rally on Friday to celebrate Jackson’s Senate confirmation as the first Black woman to serve in the Supreme Court. She is also the first Floridian.
“It’s continuously being talked about and just the mood around it, the atmosphere, it’s just so great and it inspires you. It makes you feel like, ‘Wow!’ Such an important person went to our school,” Janese said.
During her confirmation hearings, Richard B. Rosenthal, an attorney and Jackson’s former classmate at Miami Palmetto Senior High School testified about her experience there.
“Ketanji was seemingly everywhere and everything: the President of the student body; the upbeat voice delivering the morning announcements over the school’s Public Address system; the graduating senior voted Most Likely to Succeed. And, in our Speech and Debate program, she was literally the National Champion in her event.”
Rosenthal also described the moment they found out she was going to Harvard.
“The entire class immediately leaped to its feet, exploded in applause, and ran over to Ketanji to embrace her. It was one of the most genuine, heart-warming moments I have ever seen. Every student was so happy for Ketanji and so proud of her accomplishment. Nobody was jealous, nobody was resentful . . . and nobody was at all surprised. Because she was Ketanji.”
Jackson graduated from Miami Palmetto in 1988. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University and cum laude from Harvard Law School. She was also an editor of the Harvard Law Review.
“No matter how high she would climb, she always threw ladders down to the rest of us, and encouraged us and helped us make our own upward climb, to the best of our abilities,” Rosenthal said.
Edoardo Sangelaji, the president of the 2022 student council and a senior member of the volleyball team, said Jackson is still doing that. He said he felt proud because her historic achievement brought Miami Palmetto recognition.
“People that come out of here achieve truly great things,” Edoardo said.
Read Rosenthal’s statement:
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