User:Motley1023/Constance Baker Motley

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Constance Baker Motley (née Baker; September 14, 1921 – September 28, 2005) was an 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.[1][2] 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.[3]

She was the first Black woman to argue at the Supreme Court[4] 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.[5]

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.[2]

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.[6] 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.[7]

Looking at thurgood marshall article and comparing how his lead is vs Constance.

Early Life

 * Constance Baker was born on September 14, 1921, in New Haven, Connecticut, the ninth of twelve children. (WIKI)
 * 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. (WIKI)
 * Motley grew up attending New Haven’s integrated public schools and soon became an avid reader.  She was inspired by books concerning civil rights heroes and by the age of 15, she had decided to become a lawyer (LINK)
 * After a childhood largely free of overt racism, Motley experienced Jim Crow laws firsthand while traveling by train to a college in Tennessee. In Cincinnati, Motley was ordered into an aging, rusty car marked “COLORED.” She wrote of the experience, “Although I had known this would happen, I was both frightened and humiliated. All I knew for sure was that I could do nothing about this new reality.” - link
 * The daughter of working-class immigrants from the West Indies, Motley could not afford higher education. While speaking at a community center, she impressed Clarence Blakeslee, a New Haven philanthropist. When they spoke afterward, Motley wrote in her autobiography, she said she hoped to become a lawyer. Blakeslee agreed to pay for her education. - link (INCLUDED IN EDUCATION)
 * “She learned as a teenager the importance of compassion and developed then a belief that one committed person can make a difference in the world,” Williams said. - link
 * She met a minister who taught classes in Black history that focused her attention on civil rights and the underrepresentation of black lawyers. (WIKI)

Education
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.


 * Though she had already formed a desire to practive law, Due to her family’s economic situation, she could not afford to attend college immediately after graduating high school.  Instead, she took up a job as a maid for a short time before finding a job with the National Youth Administration. (LINK)
 * 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. She received her Bachelor of Laws in 1946 from Columbia Law School.
 * 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 for Robert L. Carter, who later served with Motley as a federal judge (link). She was assigned to work on court martial cases that were filed after World War II.
 * “She was very admiring of Thurgood Marshall, extremely appreciative of him hiring her,” said Richard Blum, a former clerk who helped Motley research her autobiography. “He had no issue with her being a woman.” - link
 * There she worked with and befriended Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and many other leading figures of the civil rights movement. (LINK)

Civil Right Work

 * As a front-line lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Motley personally led the litigation that integrated the Universities of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi among others as well as serving as an elected official and activist - link
 * Motley is widely acknowledged as a major figure in the Civil Rights Movement, especially its legal battles. 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.
 * From 1945 to 1964, Judge Motley worked on all of the major school segregation cases supported by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. (link)
 * 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.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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.
 * She accompanied James Meredith when he finally got to register at the University of Mississippi. (LINK)
 * 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.
 * DETAILS???
 * 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 advocating 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.
 * In the area of housing, Judge Motley represented African American plaintiffs in public housing cases in Detroit and Benton Harbor, Mich.; St. Louis. Mo.; Columbus, Ohio; Evansville, Ind.; Schenectady, New York; and Savannah, Georgia.
 * Judge Motley was also counsel for African American plaintiffs in the Jackson, Mississippi transportation facilities case which resulted in desegregating railroad and bus terminals and local buses in Jackson, Mississippi.
 * That is a case on which she ruled on behalf of Martin Sostre, a prison rights activist who has himself imprisoned in a jailhouse, where she ruled that solitary confinement was against the Constitution. To great blowback in the law enforcement community
 * Sostre v. Rockefeller and Sostre v. Otis (LINK)
 * Stewart v. Clarke Terrace Unit No. 1 (LINK)
 * Constance Baker Motley of the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Educational Fund (“LDF”) led the litigation under Thurgood Marshall’s supervision.
 * Clarke Terrace was LDF’s first lawsuit challenging discrimination in privately constructed but federally insured housing developments. It sought to enforce the rights of African Americans who purchased homes in a new subdivision only to have nearby white residents sabotage the development

Political and Judicial Firsts

 * From October 1961 to December 1964, she became the first black woman to contend before the U.S. Supreme Court
 * In her autobiography, Motley said she never was discouraged by doubts concerning her background. “I was the kind of person who would not be put down,” Motley wrote. “I rejected any notion that my race or sex would bar my success in life.” - link
 * Motley left the NAACP in 1965. She entered New York elected politics, becoming the first African American woman in the state Senate, and the first woman elected Manhattan Borough president. President Johnson appointed her to the Southern District of New York in 1966. - link
 * first female attorney @ NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) as a civil rights lawyer.
 * 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.
 * She was the first African-American woman to sit in the State Senate. She took her seat in the 174th New York State Legislature, was re-elected in November 1964 to the 175th New York State Legislature
 * She immediately began a campaign for the extension of civil rights legislation and for additional low and middle-income housing.
 * In February of 1965, Judge Motley was elected by the Manhattan members of the New York City Council to fill a one-year vacancy in the office of President of the Borough of Manhattan, and thus became the first woman to serve in that office, and as a member of New York City's Board of Estimate. (REWORD) (LINK)
 * In November 1965, she was elected to a full four-year term. J. Raymond Jones was influential in helping her reach these positions.
 * she became the first candidate for the Manhattan Presidency to win endorsement of the Republican, Democratic, and Liberal Parties (LINK)
 * as borough president, drew up a seven-point program for the revitalization of Harlem and East Harlem, and won a pioneering fight for $700,000 to plan for those and other underprivileged areas of the city.
 * With her appointment in 1966, Judge Motley became the first African American woman appointed to the federal judiciary. She became the chief judge in 1982, and assumed senior status in 1986 (LINK)

Federal Judicial Service

 * By the time she left the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund in 1965, Motley had personally argued 10 Supreme Court cases (winning nine), and assisted in nearly 60 cases that reached the high court. - link
 * Along the way, she experienced countless courtroom delays and indignities. Motley kept her cool, even as some judges turned their backs when she spoke. - link
 * The threat of violence was constant during Motley’s trips to the South. Barred from hotels, Motley stayed with local rights activists. Even when armed men stood watch, she found it difficult to sleep. One frequent host, Mississippi civil rights leader Medgar Evers, was fatally shot in his driveway. The assassin  hid behind a large hedge that Motley had urged Evers to cut down. - link
 * “She was extremely, acutely aware of the dangers, no ifs, ands or buts,” said Blum, who now is lawyer for the Legal Aid Society in New York. “She was very aware that her life was in jeopardy.” - link
 * “I have to confess that I knew very little about her when I was in law school,” said Laura Taylor Swain, who served as a law clerk for Motley, and later was a fellow U.S. District judge in Manhattan until Motley’s death in 2005. In the process of applying to clerk with her, “I learned enough to know that she was someone very significant to our country’s history and to the history of my people.” - link
 * Motley was nominated by President Lyndon B. Johnson on January 26, 1966, to a seat on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York vacated by Judge Archie Owen Dawson.
 * Senator James Eastland of Mississippi delayed her confirmation process for seven months. Eastland was in opposition to her past desegregation work including Brown v. Board of Education and Meredith v. Fair.
 * He used his influence as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee to disrupt Motley's nomination and went as far as accusing her of being a member of the Communist Party.
 * Despite opposition, she was confirmed by the United States Senate on August 30, 1966, and received her commission the same day, becoming the first African-American female federal judge.
 * She served as Chief Judge from 1982 to 1986. She assumed senior status on September 30, 1986. Her service was terminated (DIFF WORD?) on September 28, 2005, due to her death in New York City.

Notable Cases
AS AN ATTORNEY
 * From October 1961 to December 1964, she became the first black woman to contend before the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing 10 cases and winning nine.
 * On May 20, 1963, the Supreme Court handed down decisions in several sit-in cases reversing the convictions of many African-American students. One of these cases, Gober v. City of Birmingham, involving 10 African American students who had sat in at dime store lunch counters in Birmingham, was argued by Judge Motley. (LINK)
 * She also argued the case of Shuttlesworth v. City of Birmingham, involving the arrest and conviction of Reverend Fred L. Shuttlesworth and Reverend Charles L. Billups for urging the students to engage in civil disobedience. Those convictions were also reversed. (LINK)
 * On June 22, 1962, Judge Motley also prevailed in another sit-in case, Bouie v. City of Columbia, S.C. Lupper v. Arkansas, which she argued in the Supreme Court following the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, was one of the cases which resulted in a Supreme Court ruling abating all pending state court prosecutions for peacefully seeking service in places of public accommodation covered by the new law. In total, Judge Motley won nine out of the ten cases she argued before the Supreme Court. (LINK)

AS A JUDGE


 * Motley was the presiding judge on the case of Blank v. Sullivan & Cromwell, a landmark case for women lawyers. In Blank, the plaintiffs accused a law firm of sex discrimination. Due to the nature of this case and Motley's gender and race, there were calls for her to withdraw from the case assuming she would be biased. In response, she pointed to her history of impartial decisions, sometimes ruling against the plaintiff in discrimination cases.
 * In Belknap v. Leary, 427 F.2d 496 (2d Cir. 1970)., 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.
 * Motley ruled against the plaintiff in the case of 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.
 * Motley handed down a breakthrough decision for women in sports broadcasting in 1978, when she ruled that a female reporter must be allowed into a Major League Baseball locker room. In 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 reporters from entering the Yankees locker room.
 * In perhaps her most famous case, Motley, with the backing of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, helped James Meredith gain enrollment at the University of Mississippi. Campus riots broke out when Meredith registered, killing two. Federal troops restored order. - link
 * served as chief counsel for James Meredith in his fight to enter the University of Mississippi and led the defense for “Freedom Fighters” who rode interstate buses to test the success of desegregation laws. (LINK)

Honors and Awards

 * received over 70 awards and 8 honorary degrees from universities (LINK)
 * FIND EM ALL
 * Motley received a Candace Award for Distinguished Service from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women in 1984.
 * In 1993, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
 * In 2001, President Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Citizens Medal.
 * The NAACP awarded her the Spingarn Medal, the organization's highest honor, in 2003.
 * Motley was a prominent honorary member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.
 * In 2006, Motley posthumously received the Congressional Gold Medal from Congress for all of her accomplishments during her lifetime.
 * In 2011, she was honored posthumously with the 13th Ford Freedom Award for her accomplishments that helped disadvantaged communities.
 * In 2016, the Chester, Connecticut Land Trust purchased land across from her former second home. The parcel was eventually dedicated as the "Judge Constance Baker Motley Preserve". A small kiosk, picnic area, and trail are available to the public.
 * On October 6, 2019, her property located in Chester, Connecticut was designated a site on the Connecticut Freedom Trail. The site is just one of 140 that honor African-Americans throughout the state.
 * The Harlem Historical Society authored a street co-naming resolution honoring Motley for her service as an American civil rights activist, lawyer, judge, state senator, and Harlem resident. The portion of Edgecombe Avenue between 159th and 160th streets was co-named "Constance Baker Motley Place".
 * Frederick Douglass Award from the New York Urban League

Personal Life

 * Away from the courthouse, Motley found solace in an 18th century Connecticut farmhouse, where she and her husband, Joel, relaxed and invited friends for weekend visits. - link
 * “It was an old, old, old rustic house. You could walk into the fireplace,” Thompson said. “It was in the woods, and she loved it.” - link
 * Joel Motley was a constant source of support. “He adored the ground she walked on,” Thompson said. When Constance Motley’s photo was posted on New York subway walls as part of a city education  campaign, Joel Motley proudly gave copies of the poster to friends. - link
 * “She had extraordinary intelligence, fortitude, personal presence, and a desire to have an impact in the world,” Swain said. “Projecting that confidence and intelligence is the only way she could have survived and been successful at what she did.” - link
 * Constance Baker married Joel Motley Jr., a real estate and insurance broker, in 1946 at Saint Luke's Episcopal Church in New Haven, Connecticut.
 * They lived in Harlem, New York City and maintained a second home in Chester, Connecticut from 1965 until her death in 2005.
 * Baker and Motley were married for 59 years, until her death of congestive heart failure on September 28, 2005, fourteen days after her 84th birthday, at NYU Downtown Hospital in New York City.
 * Her funeral was held at the Connecticut church where she had been married; a public memorial service was held at Riverside Church in Manhattan.
 * She left one son, Joel Wilson Motley III, co-chairman of Human Rights Watch, and three grandchildren. During the early twenty-first century, Motley became a part of the Just The Beginning Foundation, a foundation dedicated to preserving African American judges who improve the African American community through their work.

Legacy

 * “She had a very modest personality,” said U.S. District Judge Anne Thompson. “She wasn’t a person to steer the conversation in that direction. It would come up, but only because others would ask her about it.” - link
 * In 1998, Motley published an autobiography, “Equal Justice Under Law.” On one subject she revealed her inner fire: the sting of racial discrimination. - link
 * Motley quietly befriended and guided younger African American women judges. Thompson who serves in the District of New Jersey, received a personal note shortly after her appointment in 1979. “She was just a very gracious person,” said Thompson, who eventually brought her law clerks to meet with Motley every year. - link
 * While Motley was personally reserved and expected long hours of herself and her chambers staff, Swain also found her to be intensely loyal to her law clerks, inviting them annually to a chambers holiday party. Motley also built confidence by entrusting clerks with highly demanding assignments. - link
 * In addition to her own clerks, Motley inspired generations of African American women lawyers who became judges themselves. - link
 * “While we may have faced challenges on the bench, when Connie lifted her voice, her life was on the line,” wrote Williams, who retired from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in 2018. “Yet time and time again, she lifted her voice higher and higher, arguing cases in hostile towns, against hostile lawyers, and before hostile judges in the pursuit of equal justice.” - link
 * “She felt very lucky, like she was in the right place at the right time,” Blum said. “The civil rights movement was the movement of an era. It changed our nation’s history. For her, this was the chance of a lifetime.” - link
 * During her time as a federal judge for the Southern District of New York, Motley made efforts to reach out to other African-American women in her position.
 * One of the women she reached out to was Judge Anne Elise Thompson who received a personal note from Motley on the day she was appointed to be a judge for the District of New Jersey.
 * In 2005, the University of Pennsylvania Law School's American Constitution Society (ACS) student chapter began to host National Writing Competitions annually in honor of Constance Baker Motley.
 * With her work on Ludtke v. Kuhn, Motley became a pivotal figure to Melissa Ludtke. Ludtke published an article in 2018 praising the work that Motley accomplished throughout her life despite the discrimination she experienced.
 * Judith Heumann, co-founder of the World Institute on Disability, credits Motley with her becoming the first licensed teacher in the state of New York who used a wheelchair.
 * U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris explicitly cites Motley's influence on her own political and law career on her campaign page.
 * Federal judge Ketanji Brown Jackson cited Motley as an influence on her own career in a speech accepting President Joe Biden's nomination to become an associate justice of the Supreme Court. Jackson and Motley share the same birthday.
 * An award-winning biographical documentary, Justice is a Black Woman: The Life and Work of Constance Baker Motley, was broadcast on Connecticut Public Television in 2012. A documentary short, The Trials of Constance Baker Motley, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 19, 2015.
 * In 2022, Civil Rights Queen, an "immersive" biography of Motley, was published.
 * ON FEMINISM
 * Despite the Ludtke v Kuhn case, and other efforts to provide equal consideration for women in the workplace, Motley rejected the label feminist—even though some famous feminists, like Shirley Chisolm and Bella Abzug—were friends and colleagues.
 * She didn't spend time articulating her feminism, but she certainly did it. She did it by being the symbol of opportunity as a woman and as a Black woman, and also doing the substance of the work," Brown-Nagin insists. "She was very strong in opening up opportunities for women, including through mentoring. She was a great friend to Sonia Sotomayor, the associate justice of the Supreme Court, who was appointed to the U.S. District Court when Motley was retiring as a judge ...I think it's a profound part of her legacy that she was the first in so many respects, but she made sure that she was not the only one," (LINK)