That day, McGee Brown became the first Black woman on the Supreme Court of Ohio.
“Looking out at that audience at all of those people, I suddenly was taken back to my grandmother,” McGee Brown said. “You realize in that moment that I was there – my getting sworn in was really the manifestation of a lot of hard work by a lot of people I’ll never know or be able to thank who struggled and fought for my ability to be here.”
McGee Brown isn’t an emotional person, but she said the thought of her grandmother, born in the South under Jim Crow laws, brought her to tears.
“And I found myself in that moment, wishing that she were alive to see that, feeling enormous gratitude but also the need to acknowledge that I stood in that place because so many people before me sacrificed,” McGee Brown said.
Long before McGee Brown became the first Black woman justice on Ohio’s Supreme Court in 2011 and judge on the Franklin County Common Pleas Court in 1992, she didn’t know that she would become a lawyer.
“When I was thinking about what I wanted to be as an adult, I just wanted to do something that mattered,” McGee Brown said.
McGee Brown grew up in Columbus and attended Columbus City Public Schools when they were still segregated. Columbus City Public Schools didn’t begin to desegregate until 1977, according to Teaching Columbus.
As a high school student, a guidance counselor brought McGee Brown, and other students, to Ohio University, where she would end up studying journalism and public relations.
“I didn’t have any idea about college,” McGee Brown said. “But there was a really cute guy on campus and I was looking around and I was like, ‘If this is college, I’m in.’ That was the sum total of my college decision.”
Cute boys on campus were a bonus for McGee Brown, but OU is where she grew up from 1978 to 1982. A few women professors and advisors also inspired McGee Brown and guided her to law school. One of these influential people in McGee Brown’s life is Sandra Haggerty. She started working at OU in 1979 and later served as the assistant dean at Scripps College of Communication from 1987-1994.
“She literally changed my life,” McGee Brown said. “At the end of my sophomore year, we started talking about what I’m going to do with this degree. And I told her that I thought I wanted to go to Washington and work for a politician, like I thought I’d be a press secretary on the Hill. And she’s like, ‘Yeah, you should go to law school.’”
After graduating from OU, McGee Brown went to law school at The Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law. She said she always felt supported as a law student there, but she appreciates OU for helping her grow.
“I think I give OU so much credit for helping me learn to be a leader and they gave me so many opportunities,” McGee Brown said. “I would not be who I am without having spent those four years there.”
hen McGee Brown knew she wanted to do something with her life that mattered, she remembered the words of James Barnes, a former political science professor at OU.
All of us have a sphere of influence,” McGee Brown said. “It can be great or it can be small. But each of us has the ability to impact the world from where we are and grow.”