Constance Baker Motley was the first Black woman to argue a case before the Supreme Court, and in 1966, became the first to serve as a federal judge.
Motley graduated from Columbia Law School in 1946. While studying law, she went to work for the NAACP’s legal staff, joining Robert L. Carter, who later served with Motley as a federal judge. The boss who hired Motley as NAACP’s first female attorney: future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.
As a front-line lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Motley led the litigation that integrated the Universities of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi among others—overcoming Southern governors who literally barred the door to African American students. She opened up schools and parks to African Americans, and successfully championed the rights of minorities to protest peacefully.
By the time she left the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund in 1965, Motley had personally argued 10 Supreme Court cases (winning nine), and assisted in nearly 60 cases that reached the high court.
While juggling desegregation cases, Motley occasionally represented Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In her autobiography, she recalled visiting King in a stench-ridden jail outside Americus, Georgia.
“The temperature must have been a hundred degrees. We could hear other prisoners in a back room yelling and moaning,” Motley wrote. “It was then I realized that we did indeed have a new civil rights leader—a man willing to die for our freedom.”
Motley left the NAACP in 1965. She entered New York elected politics, becoming the first African American woman in the state Senate, and the first woman elected Manhattan Borough president. President Johnson appointed her to the Southern District of New York in 1966.
In 2024, the U.S. Postal Service celebrated the remarkable contributions of Judge Constance Baker Motley (1921–2005), a civil rights pioneer and judiciary trailblazer, as the 47th honoree in the Black Heritage stamp series.
In celebration of Black History Month, the Training Division is honoring black legal minds in the United States who have advanced civil rights and continue to inspire advocates to dismantle systems of oppression and work for a better tomorrow.