Fifty-five years after Francis Rivers created the Harlem Municipal Court, I graduated from law school and Jesse Jackson ran for President. No one thought an African American could win; he certainly knew that. But he gave a momentous speech at the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco, where he announced a “Rainbow Coalition” — a political movement that was strong because it included and elevated people of all races, creeds, and abilities. He described our country in this way: “America is not like a blanket — one piece of unbroken cloth, the same color, the same texture, the same size. America is more like a quilt — many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread.” He observed that “in our fractured state . . . we have proven that we can survive without each other. But we have not proven that we can progress without each other . . . When one of us rises, all of us will rise. Justice is the way out. Peace is the way out.”

Take a moment to imagine that Judges Rivers, Toney and Watson were standing here now, looking around this room and comprehending what has happened to the New York Courts. I don’t know whether they would be more amazed or more gratified.  Presiding Justice Dianne Renwick, the first African American woman to lead the First Department, is one of our honorees tonight. The great Justice Debra Dowling of the Appellate Division Second Department is also being honored tonight. I appointed the first Latino Chief Administrative Judge of New York State, my brother in the trenches, Joe Zayas. Look at the rest of the court leadership — First Deputy St. George, Deputies Kaplan, Richardson and Murphy.  Look at the other Presiding Justices: LaSalle, Garry and Whelan. Look at our statewide coordinating judges Sunshine, Serita and Rivera.  Look at the size of the Judicial Friends, or the Latino Judges Association, or the Asian and Pacific Islander Judges Association, or the Association of LGBTQ+ Judges.

Last year, Sarika Kapoor, a first-generation American whose parents are from India, became the first little person appointed to serve in the Unified Court System. Last summer, Seth Marnin became the first transgender judge in the Unified Court system, and the first transgender man to serve as a judge in the entire country. Next week, a historic bench of the First Department will hold oral argument in the Bronx — every Justice on the bench will be a person of color: Presiding Justice Dianne Renwick, Justice Sallie Manzanet-Daniels, Justice Lizbeth González, Justice Julio Rodriguez III and Justice Bahaati E. Pitt-Burke.

When you look at all that, what do you see? What I see, and what I think Judges Rivers, Toney and Watson would see, is Reverend Jackson’s rainbow. It’s not as full or bright as it will be someday, but all the colors are there, and it would not have existed but for Judges Rivers, Watson and Toney and many other pioneers who would not accept the status quo. And if at points today it seems that some are attempting to dim the rainbow by rending the American quilt, we know that the answer is to draw the stitches tighter and stronger. Our inclusionary efforts today will build a better future for all.

At the 1984 convention, Reverend Jackson acknowledged that he would not be President. But he may have imagined that, in his lifetime, we would have an African American President. Thirty years after Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition speech, that President said:

We do a disservice to the cause of justice by intimating that bias and discrimination are immutable, or that racial division is inherent to America.  If you think nothing’s changed in the past fifty years, ask somebody who lived through the Selma or Chicago or L.A. of the Fifties.  Ask the female CEO who once might have been assigned to the secretarial pool if nothing’s changed.  Ask your gay friend if it’s easier to be out and proud in America now than it was thirty years ago. To deny this progress — our progress — would be to rob us of our own agency; our responsibility to do what we can to make America better.

What we — what all of us here and those working with us are doing — is just that: working together, as one, to make New York better.

I’ll leave you with one final challenge. Until the pandemic, we had a thriving  Harlem Community Justice Center, which was a neighborhood-based community court committed to bridging the gap between the court and community to achieve fairness and systematic equity in housing, community health, and access to justice. It was shuttered during the pandemic and has not reopened, because the historic building in which it sits needs major renovations to operate safely as a court. To commemorate Judges Rivers, Toney and Watson, let’s work with the City to refurbish that building and reopen that community court in their names, so that their legacy will directly affect those in the very community they were the first to serve.