The corner of Edgewood Avenue and Garden Street near Amistad Academy Middle School has an extra green street sign. It identifies the spot as Constance B. Motley Corner, which rests between the Day Street birthplace and the Garden Street childhood home of the activist, politician and federal judge who played a pivotal role in the civil rights movement.
Motley isnโt as well-known as some of the men of that movement, but sheโs no less important, says her niece Constance Royster, a New Haven attorney and the retired director of development for Yale Divinity School, who now consults for nonprofits. Royster wants every child in New Haven to know the story of the woman who grew up on the same streets and made such a difference in the world. โItโs important to lift her up as a local woman, a local child as they say,โ Royster says. โItโs important that her contributions to this countryโher many, many firstsโbe known, recognized, celebrated and that her legacy be carried forward.โ
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The โfirstsโ to which Royster alludes include Motleyโs election to the New York State Senate in 1964 and her appointment as a federal judge by President Lyndon Johnson in 1966. She was the first black woman to serve in either of those positions. But Motley is perhaps best known for her work as a trial attorney for the NAACP, playing a key role in many of its school desegregation cases, including Brown v. Board of Education and the racial integration of the Universities of Mississippi and Georgia. In the course of her career, Motley argued 10 cases before the Supreme Court, nine of which she won outright. The 10th was reversed 20 years later in her favor.
Motleyโs parents, Rachel Keziah Huggins Baker and Willoughby Alva Baker, arrived in New Haven in 1906 and 1907 from the West Indies island of Nevis. Born in 1921, Motley describes the New Haven of her childhood in her autobiography, Equal Justice Under Law (1998). โAlthough blacks were only 2 percent of the population, the neighborhood was quite thoroughly integrated,โ she writes. โThe grammar school was two short blocks away. We seemed to have no more and no less than everyone elseโฆ Fear and racial conflict were simply not a part of the landscape.โ
Yet Motley recalls childhood experiences that foretold a different story. An Amistad mural at the entrance of Augusta Lewis Troup Junior High School depicted African hero Cinquรฉ as light-skinned and brown-haired. โOnly in the early 1950s did I learn about the Amistad and its historical relevance,โ she writes. โThe whole time I was at Troop
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Shortly after graduating from Hillhouse High School in 1939, Motley spoke at a community meeting at the Dixwell Avenue Q House. New Haven philanthropist Clarence Blakeslee, a prominent white businessman who had also funded many community projects, was impressed. As Motley tells it, he called her to his office the next day and asked why she wasnโt going to college. She told him she couldnโt afford it, though she dreamed of becoming a lawyer. โWith raised, truly bushy eyebrows, he said, โWell, I donโt know much about women in the law, but if thatโs what you want to do, Iโll be happy to pay your wayโฆโโ
Motley left New Haven in 1941 to attend Fisk University in Nashville, where she first experienced daily racial segregation. (Her only prior experience had been being turned away from a whites-only beach club in Milford.) In 1942, she transferred to New York University, then went on to law school at Columbia University, where she was surprised to find several other women among her classmates as the men were going off to war. Blakeslee attended her 1946 law school graduation and offered to help her find employment, but by then she had gotten a job with the NAACP. โHe seemed pleased to learn that I had secured a position on my own and would be doing public-service work,โ Motley writes.
At the NAACPโs Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Motley met Thurgood Marshall, who would later become the first black justice of the Supreme Court. At the LDF, as itโs known, she went on to play a pivotal role in many of the civil rights eraโs key legal challenges and served as the lead attorney on Meredith v. Fair, successfully arguing for James Meredithโs admission to the University of Mississippi.
Royster remembers Motley, who died in 2005, as โstatuesque, but she had this wry kind of smile, and she had a good sense of humor.โ Despite her fame, Royster says, Motley always put family first. โAfter my grandmother passed in โ73, she wasโฆ definitely the matriarch. Everyone looked up to her for the big answers. It wasnโt something she claimed, it just happened.โ Taking on the many roles she accepted canโt have been easy, as the filmโs title suggests. โFirst of all, the
The New Haven Museum is offering two chances to get to know Motley and her legacy better with a pair of free screenings of the short documentary film The Trials of Constance Baker Motley (2015) on March 3 at 2 p.m. and March 6 at 5:30 p.m. Royster will introduce the filmโโ
Despite her many accomplishments, Motley maintained a sense of modesty. In her autobiography, she acknowledges the โdreamโ of arguing a case before the Supreme Court, an opportunity she โnever expected to have.โ But the victories, she writes, were really the Legal Defense Fundโs, and โI must acknowledge, of course, that I also coincided with history, and I have never lost sight of that fact.โ
New Haven premiere of The Trials of Constance Baker Motley
New Haven Museum โ 114 Whitney Ave, New Haven (map)
March 3 at 2pm; March 6 at 5:30pm
Free, with limited space; reserve seating via (203) 562-4183 x119 or RSVP@newhavenmuseum.org
Written by Kathy Leonard Czepiel. Image 1 courtesy of the Connecticut Womenโs Hall of Fame. Image 2, of a yearbook kept at the New Haven Museumโs Whitney Library, and image 3, of a memorial banner posted in the Chapel West district, photographed by Kathy Leonard Czepiel.