Judge Constance Baker Motley
Judge Motley (September 14, 1921-September 28, 2005) was an African American civil rights activist, lawyer, judge, and state senator. Upon hearing of the founding of the Equal Justice Society, Judge Motley stated, “Now I can relax.”
In her fifty-plus years as a jurist, Motley had a major impact on ending racial discrimination. As the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s associate counsel, she participated in writing the briefs for Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark Supreme Court decision that ended school segregation. From 1961 to 1964, Motley won nine of the 10 civil rights cases she argued before the Court, including James Meredith’s successful suit to attend the University of Mississippi.
She went on to shatter other gender and race barriers as the first African American woman elected to the New York state senate in 1964 and to the Manhattan borough presidency in 1965.
Appointed to a judgeship for the Southern District of New York in 1966, she became the first African American woman on the federal bench and, in 1982, the first African American woman to serve as chief judge. She assumed senior judge status in 1986, and in 2001, President Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Citizens’ Medal in recognition of her achievements and service to the nation.
Motley was born in New Haven, Conn., the ninth of twelve children born to immigrants from the Caribbean island of Nevis. Her mother was the founder of the New Haven chapter of the NAACP.
With financial help from a local philanthropist, she initially attended Fisk University, a historically Black college in Tennessee, before deciding to transfer to the integrated New York University.
After graduating from New York University in 1943, Motley took a well-paying job with a wartime agency that aided the dependents of servicemen. A year later, she turned down a promotion in order to attend Columbia Law School, leading her supervisor to say: “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard, a complete waste of time. Women don’t get anywhere in the law.”
While still a law student at Columbia, Motley met Thurgood Marshall, then the NAACP legal director, who offered her a job as a law clerk in the organization’s New York office. After receiving her law degree in 1946, Motley became a full-fledged member of the NAACP legal staff.