NEW YORK
When she was 15, Constance Baker Motley was turned away from a public beach because she was Black. It was only then — even though her mother was active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) — that the teenager really became interested in civil rights.
She went to law school and found herself fighting racism in landmark segregation cases including Brown v. Board of Education, the Central High School case in Arkansas and the case that let James Meredith enroll at the University of Mississippi.
Motley also broke barriers herself: She was the first Black woman appointed to the federal bench, as well the first one elected to the New York state Senate.
Motley, who would have celebrated her 40th anniversary on the bench next year, died this week of congestive heart failure at NYU Downtown Hospital, said her son, Joel Motley III. She was 84.
“She is a person of a kind and stature the likes of which they’re not making anymore,” said Chief Judge Michael Mukasey in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, where Motley served.
From 1961 to 1964, Motley won nine of 10 civil rights cases she argued before the Supreme Court.
