Constance Baker Motley

Constance Baker Motley ( born November 14, 1921 in New Haven, Connecticut; † September 27, 2005 in Manhattan, New York) was an American lawyer and first African-American judge in a U.S. federal court. Motley represented in their first years of Martin Luther King and played an important role in the civil conflicts of the black population in the 1960s. In its 55 -year legal career, she has contributed to almost every major civil action.

Constance Baker's parents had immigrated from the West Indies to the United States. It supplied as a student excellence, but could be a study at first not finance, so that they became active after graduation, first with the National Youth Administration, a New Deal agency. There philanthropist Clarence Blakelee fell on their intelligence and eloquence, and he took over the cost of their education. She first studied at Fisk University and later at New York University, where she earned a bachelor's degree in economics in 1943. She then moved to Columbia Law School, where she learned the later Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall, know. He gave her a job as a legal expert at the New York office of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People for Legal and education matters.

After completing her law degree in 1946, she initially remained at the NAACP. In 1949 she married Joel Motley, a real estate broker. As part of their work for the NAACP in 1954 she wrote several briefs for the negotiations in the case of Brown v. Board of Education. Constance Motley came in 1964 launched a political career when she was elected to the Democratic Party in the Senate from New York, where she was employed until 1965. Subsequently, she succeeds by Edward R. Dudley as District President ( Borough President ) of Manhattan and remained in that post until 1966.

On January 26, 1966, appointed as successor to Archie Owen Dawson as a judge at the Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York, Constance Motley by President Lyndon B. Johnson. After confirmation by the U.S. Senate she took office on 30 August of the same year. From 1982, she served as Chairman (Chief Judge ) of the Court. On September 30, 1986 Constance Motley joined the senior status.