Legendary judge leaves indelible mark: Constance Baker Motley built legacy as a civil rights trailblazer.Legendary judge Constance Baker Motley Constance Baker Motley (14 September 1921–28 September 2005) was an African American civil rights activist, lawyer, judge, and state senator. She was born in New Haven, Connecticut, the ninth of twelve children. left an indelible mark as a civil rights advocate and gifted scholar. Motley, a Columbia Law School Columbia Law School, located in the New York City borough of Manhattan, is one of the professional schools of Columbia University, a member of the Ivy League, and one of the leading law schools in the United States. graduate, started her legal career with the NAACP's Legal Defense and Educational Fund as a law clerk for Thurgood Marshall. She argued the 1957 "Little Rock Nine" integration case that resulted in federal troops being called in to protect nine black students at Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas Little Rock, Arkansas required military intervention to desegregate schools (1957–1958). [Am. Hist.: Van Doren, 556–557] See : Bigotry . A draft complaint that she prepared would later become Brown v. Board of Education Brown v. Board of Education (of Topeka) (1954) U.S. Supreme Court case in which the court ruled unanimously that racial segregation in public schools violated the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. . "Her commitment to civil rights was absolutely tremendous," says Hank Thomas of Stone Mountain, Georgia Stone Mountain is a city in DeKalb County and Gwinnett County, Georgia, United States. The population was 7,145 at the 2000 census. Geography The town is named for Stone Mountain, the largest exposed granite dome in North America. , one of the original 13 Freedom Riders represented by Motley when they tested compliance of the Supreme Court's ruling to desegregate interstate transportation. In 1966, she became the first black woman appointed to the federal bench. Bernice Bouie Donald, U.S. District Judge for the Western District of Tennessee and the first black female U.S. bankruptcy judge, says, "All of us knew we were standing on her shoulders." In September, Motley died at age 84, one year shy of her 40th anniversary on the bench. Laura Taylor Swain, U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of New York, counted it a privilege to serve as Motley's law clerk, and she considered Motley a mentor. Swain says, "Her legacy lives on in all aspects of American society and in a diverse federal judiciary." "Long before I met her, I knew her name," says Theodore M. Shaw, director-counsel and president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund In 1940 the organization formerly known as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and now called the NAACP launched the Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF). Since its founding, the organization has been involved in more cases before the U.S. Inc. "Constance Baker Morley's name was an institution." "She was the first woman lawyer on the Legal Defense Fund staff," Shaw says. "She set a standard for excellence not only for women lawyers but for all lawyers." |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion