Muncie Times, Muncie, Delaware County, 9 January 1997 — Page 33

The Muncie Times, January 9, 1997, Page 33

THEY HAD A DREAM

Mrs. Motley Federal Judge

by Reasons and Patrick In August, 1966, Constance Baker Motley was confirmed by the Senate as a U.S. district judge for southern New York. She thereby became the first Negro woman to sit on the federal bench. Recommended for the post by the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, Mrs. Motley was appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson after establishing a formidable reputation as a civilrights attorney. Sometimes described as the “chief courtroom tactician of the entire civil rights movement,” Mrs. Motley was associated with the legal branch of the NAACP for 20 years. In her role as a civil rights defense counsel, she was involved in virtually every

important civil rights case of the 60s, and personally directed many of them, including James H. Meredith’s 1962 battle for

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mm admission to the University of Mississippi. Mrs. Motley also served for two years as a state senator in New York and was president of New York City’s borough of Manhattan. Born in New Haven, Conn., in 1921, Constance Baker was the ninthof 12 children. Her parents were immigrants from the British West Indies. Educated

New Haven’s public schools, Constance regularly placed first or second in her class. She became interested in American history and civil rights at the age of 15, after being turned away at a public beach because of her race. Later she served as president of the NAACP youth council in New Haven, and set her sights on a legal career. Her father, however, was unable to finance a college education on his salary as a cook for student organizations at Yale University. She got a lucky break at the age of 18, however, when she gave a talk on civil rights at a Negro social center. In the audience sat Clarence W. Blakeslee, a white businessman and one of the center’s sponsors. Blakeslee was impressed and offered to finance her education. Constance studied at Fisk University, a Negro school in Nashville, Term., for a year and then transferred to New York University, earning her bachelor’s degree in economics in 1943. Then she entered Columbia as a law student. While at Columbia, she married and took a job as legal clerk to Thurgood Marshall, now a Supreme Court justice, who then headed the N AACP’s

legal defense and education fund. She received her law degree in 1946. Three years later, Mrs. Motley became an assistant counsel with the NAACP. Besides the Meredith case, she played an important role in the 1950’s in the struggle of Autherine Lucy for admission to the University of Alabama. She also represented Negroes seeking admission universities in Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina, as well as integration cases involving elementary schools throughout the south. She also represented clients arrested in sit-ins, freedom rides and other civil disobedience cases, including the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It was Mrs. Motley who led the legal battle in Alabama in which the Alabama National Guard was federalized and Gov. George C. Wallace was forced to bow to court-ordered integration of the public schools. She saw the civil rights movement as an attempt to achieve dignity. “You can have 27 degrees from 27 different universities,” she once said, “but if your skin is different, you’re still forced to use the door marked ‘colored’. “We want an end to that.”