In and out. That’s how Doug Jones, Alabama’s former U.S. Senator, thought it would go. How U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s historic visit to Alabama would go.

Last year, Jones was assigned by President Joe Biden to escort Brown Jackson through an ugly confirmation hearing that finally came to fruition in early April 2022 when the U.S. Senate voted 53-47 to seat her on the nation’s highest court, the first Black woman to attain that vaunted perch.

During the process, Jones and Jackson Brown developed a friendship and last summer he helped facilitate an invitation from Rev. Arthur Price, pastor of Birmingham’s historic 16th Street Baptist Church, for her to keynote the commemoration of the 60th year since the horror. Since a bomb planted beneath a staircase outside the church by the Ku Klux Klan famously killed four young Black girls and left two young Black boys dead in its horrific wake.

Since that bomb shook the nation from its somnambulist stupor about racism in America.

Jackson Brown “unhesitatingly” accepted, Jones recalled.

The event would be on Friday, September 15th. Justice Brown Jackson, Jones believed, would be in and out.

“I just assumed she would likely come in on Thursday and then leave Friday afternoon,” Jones shared recently. “But to my delight, she wanted to spend some time in Alabama. She had never been to the state.”

The Associate Justice and her husband, surgeon Dr. Peter Jackson, were here, turns out, for seven days. They visited sights and dined with friends, officials, professionals, and students in Birmingham, Tuskegee, and Montgomery. Yet there was a catch.

While that Friday’s appearance at the church was widely touted (after being kept under wraps for months, amazingly) Brown Jackson’s on-the-ground movements while in Alabama were to be well guarded. Security, in these precarious times, was a heightened concern, of course. But mainly, she did not want her presence anywhere to deflect light from the sacred reason for her visit.

“She made it pretty clear she did not want this to be kind of a ‘state’ visit,” says Jones. “She did not want to do public events other than the memorial because she believed it should be the focus of her visit.”

It’s hard to hide a Supreme Court Justice in plain sight. Especially one of such historic significance. But save for a couple of outings that were impossible to camouflage—like lunch at the popular Yo’ Mama’s. For the most part, though, Brown Jackson’s movements were kept under wraps by Jones and others who helped curate the trip.

Now, with the Justice’s permission (though she would not agree to be interviewed for this story), Jones and others shared insights on her Alabama itinerary:

WEDNESDAY, September 13

That smile. That big smile. That familiar big smile. That’s what Dejuana Thompson noticed first as Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court walked through the doors of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute on that Wednesday morning. On September 13th, just last month.

Thompson is the Institute’s president/CEO. She didn’t know at the time that the newest justice on the nation’s highest court had not been in town long before landing in Birmingham from the nation’s capital.

“She walked in with the biggest smile on her face,” Thompson recalled, “She was just appreciative to be in the room.”

The Institute was closed that day, but it was opened for Brown Jackson and her husband, just as it is occasionally opened privately for local groups, for state, national, and global dignitaries. For students and cabinet secretaries. For world leaders. For Janet Jackson, who took in the Institute in April before performing at Legacy Arena that evening.

Yet, as Thompson held out her hand to welcome Brown Jackson, she appreciated the rare air of a sitting SCOTUS walking through the Institute’s doors.

“I thought: How wonderful is it for her to start her journey here with us,” Thompson said.

Before the justice’s visit, Thompson and Barry McNealy, a long-time education and the Institute’s historical context expert, collaborated on how to make the experience most relevant for her.

“How do we curate this so that someone who sits with the responsibility and lens she has?” Thompson says they discussed. “So, he talked a lot about the legislation and policies that allowed for Jim Crow, separate but equal, for a segregated South. Why was there a ‘Bombingham’? You could that really made a difference for her; really brought things to life for her.”

The parameters provided for Brown Jackson’s Institute visit were not dissimilar to those at other stops: No cellphones, no personal photos, a defined window of time for the visit—45 minutes the Institute was told, maybe an hour—and only a small number of people were to be present in the building.

However, as McNeely escorted Brown Jackson through the Institute, the justice lingered, absorbing all she could. “She was reading every single [exhibit note,” Thompson said. “We were trying to rush given what we were told but she was not rushed at all. She wanted to lock in and understand what she was looking at and what was the view of the Institute as it relates to these things.”

Brown Jackson particularly paused upon reaching the exhibit featuring the original jail bars from the cell where Rev. Martin Luther King drafted the famed “Letter from Birmingham Jail” in 1963. She touched them, moved away, then touched the bars again. “She said, ‘I just can’t move, I just need a moment here,’” Thompson remembers.

Moments later, at an exhibit showing remnants of the bombing of 16th Street, specifically the effects of Denise McNair, who was killed in the attack, the justice became “very emotional,” Thompson recalled. “She took the time she needed to sit with what she was looking at—how all of this made possible for her story. I think it really colored for her why she was here.”

“She was genuinely, genuinely interested,” adds Issac Cooper, who chairs the Institute’s board of directors. She may have been there for at least two hours. She wanted to make sure that whenever she spoke – considering the significance of the 60 years since the bombing – you could tell that she took it seriously. There are folks who walk through the institute just checking a box. If she could have spent more time she would have. She said, ‘I need more time.’ I looked at the faces of her staff, and was like, ‘Oh, y’all didn’t expect this.’

“I thought, ‘I appreciate you more because you appreciate this.’”

Then came another surprise. “I didn’t have my phone; Mr. McNealy didn’t have his phone—we were being respectful,” Thomas said. “She says, hey, can we take photos? She wanted to take selfies. We were like, okay, but we had to go grab our phones. It was a whole thing.

“In a lot of ways, she was the big sister you hoped she would be sitting in one of the highest seats of our country. She was very humbled very considerate.”

Knowing there wouldn’t likely be an opportunity on Friday to wander across the street and though Kelly Ingram Park, where Black children were hosed by Bull Connor’s fire hoses and attacked by police dogs, Brown Jackson toured the grounds then paused for a time at the southeast corner of 16th Street Baptist where the KKK placed the bomb.

“I think it all just rooted her,” Thompson said. “It reminded me and our team why the Institute is so important to the preservation of our stories and of the history of what happened during the Civil Rights Movement, particularly in Birmingham. “

That evening, Brown Jackson, her husband, and four others had dinner at Jones’ home, prepared by his wife Louise and a friend. The menu: beef tenderloin, summer salad, potatoes (“modeled off the ones you get at Fleming’s,” said Jones), and dessert. Was Louise nervous about cooking for the Associate Justice? “Hell, yeah,” Jones said with a laugh.

“We just had a great, great time with some champagne, some good wine and really relaxed and enjoyed our time together,” he added. “[Brown Jackson]’s a real person—not only brilliant and articulate but a real person with a family. She and Patrick have this wonderful relationship. It was a nice time to just relax and not be on.”

THURSDAY, September 14

Very few at Children’s Hospital of Alabama knew a U.S. Supreme Court justice was in the building. She and her husband, chief of general surgery at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital, came to listen to Jones. He was speaking at Grand Rounds, the series of talks at UAB’s Heersink School of Medicine usually by members of the medical profession. In acknowledgment of the six decades since the church bombing, Jones, a lawyer, was invited to share memories of bringing the racist perpetrators to justice.

As Jones began to speak to the 100 or so attendees, Brown Jackson and her husband slipped in through a door in the back and inconspicuously took seats. “They wanted to see it but didn’t want to create a stir,” Jones said. “As I quit, they slipped out.”

The couple attended a quick meet-and-greet with a few UAB faculty and others before traveling to the northside for lunch at Yo’ Mama’s. She had fried catfish, broccoli, and cole slaw, according to my AL.com colleague Matt Wake. The restaurant later shared a photo on Facebook of Brown Jackson and Yo’ Mama’s co-owner Denise Peterson. Jones had a prior commitment and couldn’t join them. “I was disappointed because I love Yo Mama’s,” he said.

Next stop: The Birmingham Museum of Art, where Brown Jackson met and posed with a gathering of circuit and district judges who walked from the courthouse across the street. She took a separate photo with the female judges.

Circuit Judge Elizabeth French, the first female Presiding Judge in Jefferson County and the first African American female Presiding Judge in Alabama, called meeting Brown Jackson “inspirational.”

“I know first-hand that women in the legal field still face many obstacles,” she later shared. “There are many glass ceilings yet to be broken in the Alabama judicial system. There has never been a woman of color elected to serve on any of our Appellate Courts … on the federal bench in Alabama as an Article III U.S. District Court Judge.”

She cited research from the Federal Judicial Center revealing that only 70 of the 3,843 people who have served as federal judges in the United States – fewer than 2% – have been Black women.

“Justice Brown Jackson has reached the pinnacle of our legal profession,” French added. “Her dedication and commitment to the rule of law provides reassurance to me, my young daughters, and countless other women of color that one day, in Alabama, all of the glass ceilings will be broken.”

Also at the museum, Brown Jackson photographer Dawoud Bey escorted Brown Jackson through his exhibit of striking photos paying homage to the six young people killed in the bombing.

That night Birmingham chef Frank Stitt opened his famed Highlands Bar & Grill for a private dinner for the Associate justice and about two dozen other guests.

At the dinner, Brown Jackson was surprised by Hoover artist Natalie Zoghby, who’d created a portrait of the Associate Justice, one among several she’s painted of women who “inspire her.”

“She’s obviously been the object of a lot of attention and has been since her nomination” Zoghby later told my AL.com colleague Cody Short. “But she was very flattered that someone would do this on their own in conjunction with a series of prominent women in this country.”

“It was just as you can imagine,” Jones said. “A wonderful dinner.”

FRIDAY, September 15

Prior to the start of the commemoration and memorial at 16th Street Baptist Church, Brown Jackson spent time downstairs at the site with family members of the bombing victims and people who prosecuted the KKK perpetrators. As she took her place at the lectern in the pulpit, Brown Jackson stood buoyed and humbled by what she’d seen since landing, knowing her path was strewn with sacrifices of young lives.

“I come to Alabama with a heart filled with gratitude,” she said, “for, unlike those four little girls, I have lived, and have been entrusted with the solemn responsibility of serving our great nation, a service that I hope will inspire people, and especially young people, to think about what is possible, to understand the law, and to recommit themselves to the constitution and its core values, the rule of law, democracy, freedom, justice, and equality.”

Immediately following the event, Brown Jackson and her husband ventured 128 miles southeast to visit Tuskegee University, where her mother had graduated in 1967 when it was called Tuskegee Institute. Her aunt and uncle are also alums of the historically Black college that was founded by Booker T. Washington.

After meeting with numerous university officials, including President Charlotte P. Morris, and several deans, as well as students, the couple spent the evening in Montgomery.

SATURDAY, September 16

Were it possible to absorb and digest the full depth of Alabama’s racial narrative, Brown Jackson was going to give it a try. On this day, she visited several of Montgomery’s storied historic sites, each of which singularly inflicts its own emotional pangs.

The morning began amid Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsey. They’re three among 10 enslaved Black women who endured brutal, non-anesthetized (and non-consensual) medical experimentation in the late 1840s at the hands of Dr. James Marion Sims under the guise of trying to find a cure for vesicovaginal fistulas, a childbirth condition whereby a hole between a woman’s bladder and vagina caused continuous incontinence.

The surgeon used no anesthesia because he believed—as was pervasive in medicine in the 19th century, and still lingers today—Blacks were more pain-tolerant than whites.

Sims is credited with finding a cure, and long celebrated for it—until the ugly, evil truth of his experiments drew harsh light just a few years ago. Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsey—only the names of four of the women, some teens, Sims experimented on are known—stand boldly on Mildred Street, 15 feet high, sculptures created by artist Michelle Browder, who guided Brown Jackson and her husband through the work.

From there the couple traversed the gauntlet of museums dedicated to a truthful—through painful—portrayal of the Black experience in Alabama: the Rosa Parks Museum, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Civil Rights Memorial Center, and the Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice.

“It’s a lot to absorb,” said Jones. All but the Legacy Museum were closed during the time of Brown Jackson’s but amid the intensity of the place, few noticed who was in their midst.

“There was no rush,” adds Jones. “It was very low-key, just kind of walking around. And folks didn’t even know. When people go to that museum, they get so engrossed in what they’re seeing, they’re just not paying attention to their surroundings. I think the President United States, or just about anybody, could walk through there, and nobody would have noticed because people are really focused. That is an amazing place.”

SUNDAY, September 17

Time constraints and family obligations the following day prevented Brown Jackson and her husband from visiting Selma or historic Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham, where they returned on Sunday.

After spending much of the day with family, several from UAB’s medical community hosted Brown Jackson and her husband for dinner at Hot & Hot Fish Club.

MONDAY, September 18

Dr. Jackson headlined the Grand Rounds lecture at UAB on this day. Following his remarks, Brown Jackson joined him for a Q&A. “We always enjoy welcoming a wide variety of esteemed experts to speak at these events,” said Dr. Herbert Chen, chair of the university’s Department of Surgery. “Our faculty, staff, trainees, and administrators enjoyed this rare opportunity to hear unique perspectives on leadership, work-life balance, and other topics.”

It was one of several UAB-related gatherings that day for Dr. Jackson and his wife. They wrapped the day with a private dinner at a local residence.

Tuesday, September 19

It was wheels up on Tuesday morning, back to the nation’s capital and for Brown Jackson back to the business of the court.

“It was packed,” Jones said of the justice’s time in Alabama. “She put a lot in there that they wanted to do. From what I can tell, it was a really moving experience for them from start to finish. They recognized what we’ve done in the state to acknowledge our civil rights history—the good and the bad.

“It was an amazing six days.”