Taken from the Seattle Times

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...leyobit29.html


NEW YORK — Federal Judge Constance Baker Motley, who as a young lawyer represented the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and played a pivotal role in the nation's civil-rights struggle, has died at age 84.

Judge Motley died of congestive heart failure at NYU Downtown Hospital yesterday morning, said her son, Joel Motley III.

Judge Motley's early career found her fighting racism in many of the nation's landmark segregation cases. After a brief foray into politics, in 1966 she became the first black woman appointed to the federal bench and began a distinguished four-decade span as a judge.

"She's going to be missed," said Chief Judge Michael Mukasey in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, where Judge Motley served. "She is a person of a kind and stature the likes of which they're not making anymore."

Judge Motley was born in New Haven, Conn., the ninth of 12 children. Her mother, Rachel Baker, was a founder of the New Haven NAACP. Her father, Willoughby Alva Baker, worked as a chef for student groups at Yale University.

Her interest in civil rights grew after she was turned away from a public beach at age 15 because she was black.

"Judge Motley had the strength of a self-made star," federal Judge Kimba Wood said. "As she grew, she was unfailingly optimistic and positive. She never let herself be diverted from her goal of achieving civil rights, even though, as she developed as a lawyer, she faced almost constant condescension from our profession due to her being an African-American woman."

Judge Motley earned a degree in economics in 1943 from New York University, and three years later, got her law degree from Columbia Law School.

In 1945, she became a law clerk to Thurgood Marshall, who was then chief counsel of the NAACP's Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Over the next two decades, she rose to associate counsel of the organization and worked on some of the nation's most famous civil-rights cases, including preparing the draft complaint in 1950 for what would become Brown v. Board of Education.

In her autobiography, "Equal Justice Under Law," Judge Motley said defeat never entered her mind. "We all believed that our time had come and that we had to go forward."




















var campaignID = "Claria_0905_TM_PI-300"; var maxViews = 1; var maxMinutes = 1440; var classID = "remnant300"; var capit = 1;


The Supreme Court ruled in her and her colleagues' favor in May 1954 in a decision credited with toppling public-school segregation in America. But it touched off resistance across the country and led to some of the racial clashes of the 1960s and more litigation.

At the heart of much of it was Judge Motley, from a case in Little Rock, Ark., in 1957 that led President Eisenhower to call in federal troops to protect nine black high-school students to leading the legal charge to win James Meredith's entry into the University of Mississippi in 1962. She also defended King's right to march in Birmingham and Albany, Ga.

In 1966, President Johnson nominated her to the federal bench in Manhattan.

Judge Motley is survived by her husband and son, three sisters and a brother.

Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company