Constance Baker Motley was an African American civil rights activist, lawyer, judge, and state senator.
A woman of firsts, Constance Baker Motley, born in New Haven, Connecticut was the ninth of twelve children.
With financial help from a local philanthropist, she initially attended Fisk University, a historically black college in Tennessee, before deciding to move to an integrated university. Motley graduated from New York University in 1943, and then received her law degree from Columbia Law School in 1946.
Her legal career began as a law clerk in the fledgling NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), where she worked with Thurgood Marshall, Jack Greenberg, and others. The LDF's first female attorney, she became Associate Counsel to the LDF, making her the NAACP's lead trial attorney. As the NAACP Legal Defense Fund's lead counsel, she participated in writing the briefs for Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kan., etal, the landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court case that ended school segregation.
She went on to break down other gender and race barriers as the first African-American woman elected to the New York state senate (1964) and to the Manhattan borough presidency (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. Motley 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 a prominent honorary member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.
Motley died of congestive heart failure on September 28, 2005.
Motley has been quoted as saying: "Something which we think is impossible now is not impossible in another decade."
Don't you wish we had a woman like this today with all that is happening to African-American Woman in this country right now.
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