Constance Baker Motley
By
John C Abercrombie
Today is day 3 of 31, featuring the outstanding lawyer Constance Baker Motley. A woman who argured ten cases before the United States Supreme Court, winning nine outright and the tenth later overturned in her favor.
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Constance Baker Motley is an accomplished federal judge and civil rights activist who deserves to be better known and we will attempt to let you in on the secret of her amazing accomplishments.
Born in New Haven, Connecticut on September 14, 1921, to Rachel Huggins and McCullough Baker immigrants from Nevis a Caribbean Island.
Prior to coming to America, her mother was a seamstress and teacher. Her father was a cobbler (shoe repairer). After coming to America, her mother found work as a domestic worker and her father as a chef. Her father was a chef for several student societies at Yale including the secret Skull and Bones society. Her mother was a community activist and founded the New Haven NAACP.
Constance was an avid reader and credits the works of James Weldon Johnson and WEB DuBois for her interest in Black history.
She was active in school activities and became president of the New Haven Negro Youth Council and secretary of the New Haven Adult Community Council while graduating with honors. Her story is not much different in that she had a desire to practice law but lacked the finances to attend college and had to resort to working, which she did working for the National Youth Administration.
This was a New Deal Agency formed during the presidency of Franklin D Roosevelt focused on providing education and work for those between the ages of 16 and 25 and was part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). It had a division of Negro Affairs headed by Mary McLeod Bethune.
While working there she encouraged Clarence w Blakeslee while speaking. He was a businessperson and philanthropist who offered to finance her education. She spent a year at Fisk a historically Black College in Nashville, Tennessee. She then transferred to New York University graduating in 1943 with a degree in economics. She graduated from Columbia Law School in1946 with a Bachelor of Laws in 1946.
During her second year at Columbia, she was fortunate to work as a law clerk for the man who would become the first Black Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. (Thurgood Marshall) She worked on court martial cases filed after World War II.
Constance Baker Motley is known for her Civil Rights work. After graduating from Columbia Law School, she was hired by the National Association of Colored People Legal Defense and Educational Fund, better known as the LDF where she worked as a civil rights lawyer. She became Associate Counsel making her the lead attorney in many of the early and significant civil rights cases. She represented Martin Luther King Jr, and the Freedom Riders.
The Freedom Riders were integrated activists who rode interstate buses into the deep south in the early 1960s to challenge the non-enforcement of the United States Supreme Court decision in the Morgan v Virginia and Boynton v Virginia cases which ruled that segregated public buses were unconstitutional. It is necessary to understand that passengers who may have been able to sit with Whites or in the front of the bus were forced to segregate and sit in the back of the bus. Southern states had ignored rulings and the Federal government was not enforcing the provisions of the court decision.
In the landmark case of Brown v Board of Education, it was Constance Baker Motley who wrote the original complaint. This is a noteworthy accomplishment, yet she remains largely unknown.
She was also the first Black woman to argue a case before the United States supreme Court in the Meredith v Fair case where she won allowing James Meredith to become the first Black student to attend the University of Mississippi in 1962.
Constance Baker Motley argued ten cases before the Supreme Court, and her record was phenomenal wining nine of the cases with the one against her eventually being overturned in her favor. She was a key legal strategist in the Civil Rights movement helping desegregate Southern Schools, buses, and lunch counters. She was vital in integrating Clemson University allowing Harvey Gantt to attend.
It is necessary to remember that Blacks were taxpayers and were contributing to these institutions of higher learning, yet denied admittance, they were given inferior high schools and denied access to libraries and other facilities paid for by tax dollars. Many municipalities have depended on a sizable portion of their income on as excessive issuance of traffic citations and the list goes on where one has benefitted at an excessive cost of the other.
Motley has contributed to our life today. I remember when it was not possible to walk into the front door or even a fast-food restaurant. At drive in restaurants, Blacks were often required to go to the back door to pick up their food even when there was no dine in service. Motley was a key player in the strategic planning of the successful efforts to desegregate schools, buses, and lunch counters.
Motley continued in the fight for civil rights and was elected to the New York State Senate in 1964 and while there advocated for housing equality for Black, Latinx and low-income tenants. This was significant and is one of the major reasons in the economic gap between the races and hope for people to move into the middle incomes. This is THE American Dream.
Motley was nominated by President Lyndon Baines Johnson, 36th president of the United States to a seat on the District for the Southern District of New York. Senator James Eastland of Mississippi delayed the confirmation process for seven months. He was opposed to her past desegregation work including the Brown v Board of Education case and the Meredith v Fair case which integrated the University of Mississippi. Eastland used his power as the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee to disrupt the nomination and went so far as to call her a member of the Communist Party, which was NOT true.
Despite the efforts of Senator Eastland, she was confirmed on August 30, 1966, receiving her commission the same day, thereby becoming the first Black female federal judge. She served as Chief Judge from 1982 to 1986 when she assumed senior status on September 30, 1986, where she served until her death September 28, 2005.
As we look at the life of Constance Baker Motley, it is necessary to count the fact that she was on the short list for the seat that was eventually filled by Thurgood Marshall on the United States Supreme Court in October of 1967.
During her illustrative career she presided over some significant cases, and we will look at some of them here.
- Blank v Sullivan & Cromwell – A landmark case for women. Blank along with several other woman filed suit against Sullivan and Cromwell alleging sexual discrimination in hiring practices under Title VII. Blank filed interrogatories relating to the number of men and women associates, partners, and the number of men and women offered partner in the firm. The court denied Blank’s discovery request.
- Belknap v. Leary – another highly publicized case, Motley admonished the New York City police for not providing Vietnam war protesters with adequate protection against violence in the streets.
- Mullarkey v. Borglum in 1970. This case involved female tenants in New York City arguing that their male landlord was violating their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. The defendants cited the landlord’s overreach of power but failed to detail the landlord’s legal failings. Motley ruled in favor of the defendant, rejecting the plaintiffs’ claim of sex discrimination, and going against her former advocacy for tenants during her time in the New York State Senate. This case demonstrates the impartiality of Motley.
- Ludtke v. Kuhn – Melissa Ludtke filed a lawsuit against Bowie Kuhn, the Major League Baseball Commissioner, The American League President Leland MacPhail, and three New York City officials over the New York Yankees gendered policy forbidding female sports reports from entering the Yankees locker room
As expected, Constance Baker Motley received many distinguished awards including:
- 1984 the Candace Award for Distinguished Service from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women.
- 1993 she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame
- 2001 President Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Citizens Medal
- 2003 the NAACP awarded her the Spingarn Medal the organization’s highest honor
- 2006 Posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal from Congress for her lifetime achievements.
- 2011 the 13th Ford Freedom Award for accomplishments helping disadvantaged communities.
As we review the life of this amazing American Citizen, we see the determination that once instilled is indistinguishable. Despite being encouraged to avoid the feel because of the treatment of both women and Blacks, she none the less took on the challenge and by all accounts succeeded. This should serve as a role model for ALL people in the power of the human to achieve.
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Constance Baker Motley 1
Black woman appointed to the federal judiciary and the first to argue before the Supreme Court. Harvard law professor Timoko Brown-Nagin joins Nicole Ellis to
‘Civil Rights Queen’ examines the legacy of Constance Baker Motley
As President Biden prepares to nominate the first Black woman to the Supreme Court, we revisit another historic first. Constance Baker Motley was the first le
discuss her new book on Motely’s life and legacy called, “Civil Rights Queen.”
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Constance Baker Motley: Celebrating her life and legacy.
LDF commemorated the 100th birthday of Constance Baker Motley, renowned civil rights strategist, lawyer, elected official, and judge, in a special online event.
LDF’s first female attorney, Constance Baker Motley wrote the original complaint in Brown v. Board of Education and pioneered the legal campaigns for several seminal school desegregation cases. She was the first Black woman to argue before the Supreme Court and went on to win nine out of ten cases.
Motley became the first Black woman to serve in the New York State Senate and the first woman to serve as Manhattan Borough President. When President Johnson appointed her to the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, she became the first Black woman to sit as a federal judge.
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The Trials of Constance Baker Motley,’ a film screening and Q&A with Joel Motley
Harvard Law School hosted a film screening of “The Trials of Constance Baker Motley,” and a Q&A with Joel Motley ’78 on Nov. 4. Constance Baker Motley was a lawyer for the NAACP’s legal defense fund and a civil-rights pioneer. Her son, Joel Motley, co-produced the short film about his late mother’s life story. Harvard Law School Professor Tomiko Brown-Nagin, who is currently at work on a biography of Constance Baker Motley, “The Only Woman in the Courtroom: Constance Baker Motley and Twentieth-Century Struggles for Equality,” moderated the discussion.
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Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality
In her new book, Civil Rights Queen, Tomiko Brown-Nagin examines the life and work of pathbreaking lawyer, politician and judge, Constance Baker Motley. The counterpart to Thurgood Marshall—”Mr. Civil Rights”—Motley litigated hundreds of cases that remade American law and society, including Brown v. Board of Education. She also desegregated flagship public universities in Florida, Georgia, and Mississippi, and represented Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Birmingham Children’s Marchers—helping rescue the pivotal campaign that gave rise to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Then, as the first black woman federal judge, Motley decided landmark cases that, among other things, implemented the Civil Rights Act. Yet she is not nearly as well known today as her impact on public life would suggest. Brown-Nagin argues that Motley’s gender, and scholars’ tendency to divide the civil rights movement into discrete and antagonistic legal and direct-action wings, help explain why. Looking at the civil rights movement and the legal profession through a woman’s eyes, Brown-Nagin explores themes such as law versus politics as pathways to reform, diversity in the Black experience, identity and judging, and the “price of the ticket” when outsiders become insiders in the power structure.
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In the life story of Constance Baker Motley enhanced by the videos and books we see a great life that resulted from pursuing her dreams and not falling prey to the well-intentioned comments to the contrary. We all too often allow us to determine our path, our success or failure in life. While it is good to consider the advice given, you are the final arbitrator of your fate.