Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equal Justice Under the Law

Constance Baker Motley, a legal advocate and a pivotal figure in the Civil Rights movement, was the first black woman to serve in the New York State Senate, as well as the first woman to be Manhattan borough president. In 1966, following the encouragement of New York’s Democratic Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Republican Senator Jacob K. Javits, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Motley to the federal bench of the Southern District of New York. She was the first female African American federal judge.

On October 8, 2015, the Dean’s Seminar Series on Race and Policy hosted a screening and panel discussion of the film “The Trials of Constance Baker Motley.” The panelists included SIPA Dean Merit E. Janow; Joel Motley, the son of Judge Constance Baker Motley; former mayor David N. Dinkins, SIPA Professor in the Professional Practice of Public Affairs; and Alondra Nelson, Dean of Social Science and Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies at Columbia.

“Judge Motley played an important role in the desegregation of higher education,” said Nelson. Though most of her work was done through the courts to put an end to segregation in higher education, she also visited Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in jail, sang freedom songs in churches that had been bombed, and spent a night under armed guard with Medgar Evers, the civil rights leader who was later murdered. “Today, in our post-Civil Rights era, it’s easy to be a little dismissive of the power of the law to effect social transformation and to think that the law is not radical enough to spur change, but this film moved me to reconsider [the role of the law in social movements].”

“She litigated her civil rights cases with meticulous skill and rigor,” said Janow. As the film depicted, Judge Motley was a tall, gracious, and stately woman whose oft-stated goal was as simple as it was sometimes elusive: dignity for all people. She also adopted a dignified approach to her work.

“It took enormous courage to do what she did,” said Dinkins. “You had to be ten feet tall to get recognition, and this magnificent woman took a step down to be borough president.”

In the film, Judge Motley was asked about her role as a professional woman, and to this she responded: “I think a home ought to be run like a business.”

“She was very honest about the fact that professional women may not be able to ‛have it all,’ let alone black women,” said Nelson.

“She never did intimidation very well,” said Joel Motley, also a lawyer and managing director at Public Capital Advisors.

As the film ended, a photo appeared of Judge Motley sitting with nearly 20 white men in a group photo for the judges of the U.S. Court for the Southern District of New York in 1966. This image is emblematic of Judge Motley’s ability to transcend and combat the race and gender disparities present in the 1960s. She should not only be remembered as an icon of the civil rights movements, but also as a symbol of feminism.

Rebecca Krisel, SIPA News 2016