[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 124 (Thursday, September 29, 2005)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E2002]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          REMEMBERING THE LIFE OF JUDGE CONSTANCE BAKER MOTLEY

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. ALCEE L. HASTINGS

                               of florida

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, September 29, 2005

  Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to remember and 
honor the invaluable contributions of Judge Constance Baker Motley. She 
died of congestive heart failure at NYU Downtown Hospital in New York 
City yesterday at the age of 84. Judge Motley was a woman of many 
firsts and true pioneer in the civil rights struggle.
  Judge Motley was a woman with numerous accomplishments. She helped 
write briefs in the groundbreaking Brown vs. Board of Education case in 
1954 and she headed a legal campaign that opened admission at the 
University of Mississippi to James Meredith in 1962. Meredith was the 
first African American student to attend that school. By the time he 
graduated in 1963, Constance Motley had made 22 trips to Mississippi on 
behalf of the case. Later that year, she helped 1,100 black children be 
reinstated in Birmingham after they were expelled for taking part in a 
demonstration. Judge Motley also served as the first black woman in the 
New York State Senate in 1964 and the first woman borough president for 
Manhattan.
  In 1966, Judge Motley was sworn in by President Lyndon Johnson as the 
first African American woman to serve as a federal judge. She ruled on 
a number of cases that dealt with everything from discrimination in 
housing to denial of benefits to Medicaid recipients to prisoners who 
had been unconstitutionally confined to solitary confinement for more 
than a year.
  Her aspiration for what she termed as ``dignity for all people'' 
emerged early. Constance Motley was the ninth of twelve children born 
to parents from the small Caribbean island of Nevis. At the age of 15, 
she was not allowed onto a public beach because she was black. It was 
then that she began reading all she could about black history. She 
later became president of her N.A.A.C.P youth council.
  Three years later, Clarence W. Blakeslee, a white philanthropist, 
heard Constance Motley giving a speech at an African-American social 
center. He was so moved by her stately oration that he offered to 
finance her aspirations for a law degree.
  Judge Motley attended Fisk University in Nashville, my alma mater, 
then transferred to New York University. In 1946, she graduated from 
Columbia School of Law and become a volunteer at the N.A.A.C.P.'s Legal 
Defense and Education Fund, which had been founded by Thurgood 
Marshall.
  Known for her dignified manner and quiet approach, Judge Motley was 
highly regarded as an extraordinary legal tactician. It was also one of 
the reasons Thurgood Marshall felt that she could be so effective 
during the Meredith case in 1961. Of the ten cases she argued before 
the Supreme Court, Judge Motley won nine. She continued to work 
tirelessly on a variety of civil rights cases. One of the most recent 
cases included her decision in 1978 allowing a female reporter to be 
admitted to the New York Yankees' locker room.
  Mr. Speaker, Judge Constance Baker Motley was a brilliant advocate 
for the legal rights of all people. In her autobiography Equal Justice 
Under Law, Motley said defeat never entered her mind. ``We all believed 
that our time had come and that we had to go forward.'' It is with this 
faith that she lived, and in this spirit that she will forever be 
remembered.