Constance Baker Motley (1921–2005,) née Constance Baker, was an American lawyer and jurist. A legal advocate in the African-American civil rights movement, she became the first African American woman to become a federal judge and the first black woman to be elected to the New York state senate.
Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Motley graduated from New York University and earned a law degree from Columbia University in New York City. She was an assistant attorney to Thurgood Marshall arguing the case Brown v. Board of Education.
As counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP,) Motley won nine of the ten civil rights cases she litigated before the Supreme Court. She was one of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s chief legal advisers. She defended his right to march against segregation in southern cities like Birmingham-Alabama and Albany-Georgia.
Motley was the first African-American woman appointed to the federal judiciary, serving as a U.S. District Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Motley’s autobiography is Equal Justice Under Law (1998.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Constance Baker Motley
Something which we think is impossible now is not impossible in another decade.
—Constance Baker Motley
Topics: Determination
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