📍Midwood, Brooklyn, NY 11230, USA
1933 – 1950“I grew up in a working-class neighbourhood of Flatbush and Midwood in Brooklyn, in a small house on East 9th Street, a few blocks from Ocean Parkway. My parents, Nathan and Celia Bader, were the children of Jewish immigrants; my father was a furrier and later a haberdasher, and my mother had worked in a garment factory so that her brother could go to college. She was the brightest person I knew, and she never had the chance to use her mind as she wished. She resolved that I would. My mother read to me constantly and took me every week to the public library, which was above a Chinese restaurant; I can still remember the smell of the food as I chose my books. She taught me to be independent and to be a lady, which meant not wasting energy on anger. At James Madison High School I played the cello, twirled a baton, cheered for the team and wrote for the school newspaper, including articles about the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights. I was a Dodgers fan, like everyone else in Brooklyn. My mother became ill while I was in high school and was not able to see me graduate, but her lessons went with me to Cornell, to Harvard and Columbia law schools, and through every door that was closed to women. I argued before the Supreme Court for equal treatment of men and women, and then sat on it for twenty-seven years. I often said that I hoped I was all that my mother would have been, had she lived in an age when women could aspire and achieve. Brooklyn, which shaped me, has honoured me with a statue at City Point.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today