Constance Baker Motley

THE HONORABLE CONSTANCE BAKER MOTLEY The Honorable Constance Baker Motley is an extraordinary person, and one of the noteworthy and surprising facts about her is how little has been written about her life and work. If, after this presentation, you are interested in learning more about her, you might read her autobiography, Equal Justice Under Law,1 and you might watch a videotape of a 1988 interview of her conducted by Alfred Aman, Professor and former dean at the Indiana University School of Law at Bloomington.2 Our library can secure the videotape for you through interlibrary loan. The bibliography lists other materials relevant to her life and work. Here are several striking facts about Constance Baker Motley, any one of which would make her worthy of serious study. She was the fifth woman, and the first Black woman, appointed to the federal bench.3 She served for almost twenty years, from 1946 to 1964, as staff attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., and was part of the "inner circle" responsible for Brown v. Board of Education, a case that many consider to be the most important of the twentieth century.4 She represented James Meredith in his successful attempt to integrate the University of Mississippi, integration that was accomplished only with the 1Constance Baker Motley, Equal Justice Under the Law (1998). 2An interview with Judge Constance Baker Motley conducted by Alfred C. Aman (1988). 3Linn Washington, Black Judges on Justice (1995), p. 760. 4Michael J. Klarman, From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality, (2004), p. 638. Richard Kluger, Simple Justice, Vol. II (1977), p. 638 ("widely deemed to be the most important Supreme Court decision of the twentieth century"). 1 of 23 intervention of federal troops but then “‘put an end to massive resistance’ . [;] '[a]fter that, . .there was no further need for federal troops in the struggle.’”5 She argued ten cases before the United States Supreme Court, and she won nine of them.6 She may have been the first Black woman in modern times to argue before the Supreme Court;7 she certainly was one of the few women to make such arguments in those decades. Justice William O. Douglas wrote in his autobiography that Charles Hamilton Houston's mind “had as sharp a cutting edge as any I have known" and that Constance Baker Motley "was equal to Houston in advocacy of cases. [T]he quality of [her] . arguments would place her in the top ten of any group of advocates at the appellate level in this country.”8 (If you don’t know who Charles Hamilton Houston was -- or you want to know more about him -- you might read the talk I gave about him. Its’ on my webpage at http://www.indylaw.indiana.edu/instructors/roisman/houston.pdf. She was the first black woman and only the second woman elected to the New York State Senate and the first woman to serve as a New York City Borough President, in her case, of Manhattan, and therefore on the New York City Board of Estimate.9 Here is a bit more detail about her life and her work. Constance Baker Motley's parents emigrated to the United States from Nevis, a tiny 5William Doyle, An American Insurrection: The Battle of Oxford Mississippi (2003), p. 296 (quoting Constance Baker Motley). 6Washington, supra note 3, at 128 7Motley, supra note 3, at 201 8Id. at 195 (quoting The Court Years). 9J. Clay Smith, Jr., Rebels in Law: Voices in History of Black Women Lawyers, at 41 (1998). (Only two Black men initially appointed, id. at 43-44.) 2 of 23 island in the Eastern Caribbean, where their forebears had been slaves. They settled in New Haven, where Constance Baker was born and attended public schools. Her father was a cook; her mother, a housewife; she was the ninth of twelve children.10 Her comments about her mother are particularly appropriate for consideration of women's history, for they leave the reader wondering what her mother might have achieved had she lived at a time when women were less restricted: Everybody loved my mother. Even people who were not her relatives would come to her with their problems. When she died in 1973, hers was the second-biggest funeral the church ever had. I did not realize how many friends she had accumulated over the years after I left home. I think if my mother had had the opportunity she would have pursued her education and gone to college. She had that much intelligence and was that interested in government, community affairs, and people's lives.11 She also tells about her mother a story that I found particularly moving: When I was in the fifth grade, we moved to a house on Garden Street that had a nice big back yard. I remember one day playing in front of the house with my sisters Eunice and Marion when a white man approached and asked to speak to our mother. We called for her, and when she came out, the white man asked if she could spare any food since he had not eaten for a while and was in search of work. This was about 1931. The man said he was trying to make it to Boston. I thought my mother would simply shoo him away with words like "I have too many children to feed." Instead, much to my surprise, she invited him to the back yard, where she directed him to sit on the porch. I realize now it was my mother's way of sheltering the man from the embarrassment of begging and eating in public. My mother went into the house and, as usual, found something in the icebox. We children watched the man gobble down whatever it was and then ask for a glass of water. We had learned in school about hobos and vagabonds who roamed the country, but that was the first time I actually saw one. When the man left, I asked my mother why she had given him food, since he was white. She replied, 10Invisible Bar 157. 11Constance Baker Motley, Equal Justice Under Law (Farrar, Straus & Giroux 1998), p. 17. 3 of 23 "Because he was hungry."12 From a young age, Constance Baker wanted to become a lawyer, but her family's financial situation made it impossible even for her to attend college. Her outspokenness and courage served her well, however, and provided the opportunity for her to do both. Late in 1940, after Constance Baker had graduated from high school, she took a job "varnishing chairs for a building reconstruction project."13 She also was a community activist and served as president of the New Haven Negro Youth Council. At a meeting called to discuss the apparent lack of interest shown by the Black community in opportunities provided by the Dixwell Community House, Constance Baker, as she recalled, "said that all the people on the board [of the House] were from Yale, and, therefore, the black community had no real input into what was going on; they did not consider it their place, and so we did not have a mass response to the center."14 Constance Baker wrote later: "I was the only speaker who caused a stir."15 As it happened, one person who attended the meeting was a white multimillionaire, Clarence W. Blakeslee, president of the New Haven Gas Company, the Water Company, and C.W. Blakeslee & Sons, a founder of Union Trust Company, and a philanthropist who had given a good deal of money to, among other things, Dixwell Community House. A day after the meeting at which CB "caused a stir," she was told that Mr. Blackslee wished to see her. This is 12Constance Baker Motley, Equal Justice Under Law (Farrar, Straus & Giroux 1998), p. 23. 13Invisible bar 157. 14CB 45 15CB 45 4 of 23 her account of what happened when she went to his office a few days later: The day after the meeting, I had a telephone call from the newly appointed director of the community center. He said Mr. Blakeslee wanted to see me. I went a day or so later. He and I talked alone in his unpretentious office. He said, as best I can recall, "I was very impressed with what you had to say the other night. I looked up your high school record, and I see you graduated with honors. I want to know why you are not in college." Startled, I said, "I don't have the money to go to college. My parents do not have the money to send me to college." He asked, "What would you like to do?" I said, "I'd like to be a lawyer." With raised, truly bushy eyebrows, he said, "Well, I don't know much about women in the law, but if that's what you want to do, I'll be happy to pay your way for as long as you want to go. I am sending my grandson to Harvard Law School. I guess if I can send him to Harvard, I can send you to Columbia." Then he said, "Never be afraid to speak up; as Abraham Lincoln said, an independent voice is God's gift to the nation."16 Judge Motley has written that when she went home and told this story to her parents, They didn't much believe it. But they didn't oppose it. They had never encouraged me to become a lawyer.

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