I’m listening to the tape of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Senate confirmation hearing yesterday, as I write.

No doubt you were also moved by her story from her freshman year at Harvard.

“Persevere” was the single word uttered to her by a Black woman whose path she crossed one night on campus.

Like Judge Jackson, I graduated from a public high school, but my family was upper middle class.

Baltimore City College and my mother had prepared me well for Amherst College.

My moment of perseverance came in law school.

I flunked a Civil Procedure exam.  The professor asked me how I did in my other classes.

“In Telford Taylor’s Constitutional Law class,” I responded, “I got an A.”

I met with Baltimore City Public Schools officials today.

We discussed the Jackson hearing.

“It’s your job to educate those students who go on to college for their moment when they need to persevere,” I said.

They understood.