When Tannera George Gibson stood up to speak, the significance — and juxtaposition — of the moment was not lost on anyone in the room.

 The audience inside The Bluff restaurant Tuesday, March 22, consisted of a few dozen members of the Memphis Rotary Club and a handful of guests.

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Oblivious to the noise from a steady noontime rain, they all listened intently as Gibson shared her personal story that in essence was a circuitous journey from a White Station High School graduate to becoming a partner in one of this city’s premier law firms and now the first Black woman president of the Memphis Bar Association.

Hers is an inspiring story of trial and error mixed with determination and, as she explains it, “a calling.” It is a story grounded in the strength of a caring family. Her father, the late Tanner George, was a respected business leader in Memphis and a co-founder of the Black Business Association.

But after graduating from White Station, Gibson enrolled at Emory University in Atlanta and was on her way to becoming — for lack of a better term — a techie at a time when high tech jobs were the way to go.

“I was good at it, but I hated it,” Gibson said. Eventually, she returned to Memphis, and even tried to pursue a career in the real estate field. She hated that too — and was not good at it.

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Then one day, she ran into a high school classmate who had gotten a law degree. And suddenly it clicked. Except Gibson thought she had missed the legal boat. She was in her upper 20s, too old, she concluded, to go back to school.

No kidding. That’s what he said. Then her brother asked her, in so many words, do you want to be 30 doing something you hate or 30 doing something you love?

The answer was obvious. Gibson enrolled in the University of Memphis Law School. And the rest is trailblazing history.

It was purely by accident that Gibson’s appearance before Memphis Rotary came on the first day of tense questions and answers in the Senate confirmation hearing for Ketanji Brown Jackson, who has been nominated by President Joe Biden for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.

If and when she is confirmed, Jackson will become the first African American woman on the court in its 233-year history. Beyond a reasonable doubt, Jackson is impeccably qualified to sit on the court. Her experience and diverse legal background make her arguably the most qualified of all recent appointees. That includes appointees by both Democratic and Republican presidents.

And yet, far right-wingers, including all the usual suspects on the Senate Judiciary Committee, are aflutter over the fact that Jackson’s ascension to the nation’s highest court is virtually a fait accompli.

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They know that Republicans will be unable to block Jackson’s nomination. I even expect that she will get a couple of GOP votes in the Senate, maybe more. So instead, the likes of Sens. Ted Cruz and Tennessee’s own Marsha Blackburn are racially dog whistling that Jackson is soft on crime.

They’re also seeking to tie her to Critical Race Theory — that dreaded academic concept that no Republicans at the federal or state level can intelligently define.

They just know it’s bad. And it stirs up their voting base. So anytime they can raise CRT, particularly in an election year, why not do it. For them, it’s good politics.

It’s why our legislature is blindly following the lead of other red states in trying to bully college professors, like myself, into steering clear of any classroom discussions around racial beliefs and our country’s sordid racial history.

But enough about them. Most elected Republicans — from our state capitol in Nashville to the halls of Congress — have proven they are incapable of having an intelligent debate about issues even remotely related to race. So why bother highlighting their tantrums?

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Instead, let’s put the focus where it belongs — on our society’s long-overdue reckoning with racial inequities. But let’s be clear. This reckoning is not a full-blown offensive to correct 246 years of racial disparities in America. It’s more like baby steps designed to start making our institutions more reflect the makeup of our population.

Even more significant, it’s not about pushing unqualified people of color into positions in which they do not belong. Prior to Jackson’s nomination, a Wall Street Journal editorial noted, “Mr. Biden’s campaign promise that he’d appoint a Black woman to the Supreme Court is unfortunate because it elevates skin color over qualifications.”

What nonsense.

Without question, Jackson is every bit as qualified — if not more so — than the 108 white men, out of a total of 115 justices, who have sat on the court.

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As contributing writer Dana Brownlee, a Black woman, wrote in a Forbes article earlier this week, “In a staunchly democratic country founded on clear principles of ‘equality for all,’ it shouldn’t feel like a miracle for an impeccably credentialed, highly experienced Black female jurist to be nominated to the Supreme Court — yet it does.”

Likewise, in a city such as Memphis that is known for its rich racial diversity, it shouldn’t feel like a miracle for Tannera Gibson to become the first Black woman ever to make partner in the Burch, Porter & Johnson law firm — a firm founded by the late Lucius Burch Jr., who was revered for his progressive stance on racial relations.

And it should not be a miracle that Gibson this year became the first Black female president in the 148-year history of the Memphis Bar Association. Yet for some, it is.

But as Gibson told Rotarians Tuesday, hopefully there will come a day when someone who looks like her leading the local bar will be more of a routine and less of a wow.

I wish the same for many of our institutions, particularly our highest court. And with Ketanji Brown Jackson’s pending confirmation, the journey to racial equity is taking another important baby step.