September 14

Constance Baker Motley, an American lawyer, most notably NAACP legal counsel during the Civil Rights movement, was the first African American woman to become a federal judge.

Born to Caribbean immigrants on September 14, 1921 in New Haven, CT — the ninth of 12 children — Constance Baker grew up in a working-class family but early on was exposed to issues of civil rights.

Her mother Rachel Baker, formerly a teacher in her native Nevis, worked as a domestic, but also as a community activist, founding the New Haven chapter of the NAACP. At 15, Constance began reading Black history, including works by James Weldon Johnson and W.E.B. Du Bois. Perhaps impressed by her mother’s example of activism, she was also influenced by a local minister who helped shape her interest in civil rights and the underrepresentation of black lawyers.

Baker joined the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) after she was denied admission to a public beach and skating rink. While Constance could not afford college, her academic talent so impressed a wealthy white philanthropist, Clarence Blakeslee, that he offered to pay for her education. Constance went first to Fisk University but later graduated from New York University in 1943.

In 1946, Baker married Joel Wilson Motley, a real estate and insurance broker, and graduated from Columbia University Law School. Having already begun working with Thurgood Marshall before completing law school (and while working for Marshall she aided him in the case Brown v. Board of Education), for the next 20 years Baker Motley served as a NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund staff member and associate counsel. As an NAACP lawyer she won nine civil rights cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, including James H. Meredith’s suit for admission to the University of Mississippi in 1962.

In 1964, Baker Motley won election to the New York State Senate, the first African American woman to serve in that body, and in 1965 she became the first woman to serve as a New York City borough president. While working in that capacity, she developed a plan to revitalize the inner city and to improve housing and inner-city schools.

In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson nominated Baker Motley to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, making Motley the first Black woman to be appointed a federal judge, ascending to chief judge in 1982 and senior judge in 1986, where she served until her death in 2005.

Constance Baker Motley was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1993 and published her autobiography, , in 1998.

Footnotes:

• Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, “African American Desk Reference,” New York: Trade Paper Press, 1999.
• The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Constance Baker Motley.” Encyclopedia Britannica, 9 Oct. 2024. Accessed 16 May 2025.