Constance Baker Motley

Constance Baker Motley ( Baker; September 14, 1921 – September 28, 2005) was an African American jurist and politician who served as a Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.

A key strategist of the civil rights movement, she was state senator, and Borough President of Manhattan in New York City before becoming a United States federal judge.

Constance Baker was born on September 14, 1921, in New Haven, Connecticut, the ninth of twelve children.

Her parents, Rachel Huggins and McCullough Alva Baker, were immigrants from the Caribbean Island Nevis.

Before coming to the United States, Rachel worked as a seamstress and a teacher while McCullough worked as a cobbler.

After they immigrated, her mother served as a domestic worker, and her father worked as a chef for different Yale University student societies, including the secret society Skull and Bones.

Motley describes her parents' education as being equivalent "to the tenth grade in the States".

Her mother, Rachel Baker, served as a community activist.

She founded the New Haven NAACP.

At 15, she read works by James Weldon Johnson and W.E.B. DuBois, which inspired her interest in Black history.

She met a minister who taught classes in Black history that focused her attention on civil rights and the underrepresentation of black lawyers.

While in high school, Motley became president of the New Haven Negro Youth Council and was secretary of the New Haven Adult Community Council.

In 1939, she graduated with honors from Hillhouse High School.

Although she had already formed a desire to practice law, Motley lacked the means to attend college, and instead went to work for the National Youth Administration.

She also continued her involvement in community activities.

Through this work she encountered local businessman and philanthropist Clarence W. Blakeslee, who, after hearing Motley speak at a New Haven community center, offered to pay for her education.

With his financial help, she started college at Fisk University, a historically black college in Nashville, Tennessee, but after one year, she transferred to New York University, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics in 1943.

In October 1945, during her second year at Columbia Law School, future United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall hired her as a law clerk.

She was assigned to work on court martial cases that were filed after World War II.

Motley is widely acknowledged as a major figure in the Civil Rights Movement, especially its legal battles.

She obtained a role with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund as a staff attorney in 1946 after receiving her law degree, and continued her work with the organization for more than twenty years.

She was the first Black woman to argue at the Supreme Court and argued 10 landmark civil rights cases, winning nine.

She was a law clerk to Thurgood Marshall, aiding him in the case Brown v. Board of Education.

Motley was also the first African-American woman appointed to the federal judiciary, serving as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.

She received her Bachelor of Laws in 1946 from Columbia Law School.

After graduating from Columbia's Law School in 1946, she was hired by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) as a civil rights lawyer.

As the fund's first female attorney, she became Associate Counsel to the LDF, making her a lead trial attorney in a number of early and significant civil rights cases including representing Martin Luther King Jr., the Freedom Riders, and the Birmingham Children Marchers.

She visited Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. while he sat in jail, as well as spent a night with civil rights activist Medgar Evers under armed guard.

In 1950, she wrote the original complaint in the case of Brown v. Board of Education.

The first African-American woman ever to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, in Meredith v. Fair she won James Meredith's effort to be the first black student to attend the University of Mississippi in 1962.

Motley was successful in nine of the ten cases she argued before the Supreme Court.

The tenth decision, regarding jury composition, was eventually overturned in her favor.

She was otherwise a key legal strategist in the civil rights movement, helping to desegregate Southern schools, buses, and lunch counters.

Beyond her work with LDF, Motley continued her civil rights work as an elected official.

In 1964, she was elected to the New York State Senate and devoted much of her time to advocate for housing equality for majority-Black and Latino, low-income tenants.

She also endorsed urban renewal projects and looked to improve the neighborhoods in New York City that needed aid.

Motley was elected on February 4, 1964, to the New York State Senate (21st district), to fill the vacancy caused by the election of James Lopez Watson to the New York City Civil Court.

In 1965, Motley was elected President of the Borough of Manhattan to fill a one-year vacancy.

She was the first woman to hold the office.

As president, she authored a revitalization plan for Harlem and East Harlem, successfully fighting for $700,000 to improve these and other underserved areas of the city.