Columnist
Days before choosing Harriet Miers to succeed retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, President Bush told his fellow Americans that he was “mindful that diversity is one of the strengths of the country.” Whether Miers is truly qualified to make good on the president’s words will be the subject of much debate. While she prepares to meet her inquisitors, she would do well to consider the extraordinary example of Constance Baker Motley.
Motley died last month at age 84, having spent most of her career fighting valiantly to secure civil rights for all Americans.
After graduating from New York University in 1943, Motley worked briefly at a wartime agency set up to assist servicemen’s dependents. Her boss scoffed when Motley told her that she would soon be heading off to Columbia Law School. “Women don’t get anywhere in the law,” her boss said. “That’s a complete waste of time.”
Not for Motley. Decades later, she became the first black woman appointed to the federal judiciary. That post was the ultimate in a series of firsts, including being the first black woman elected to the New York state Senate and the first woman to be elected Manhattan borough president. Those achievements came years after being the first black woman to argue a civil rights case for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF).
Robert L. Carter often worked with Motley during those years. In his memoir A Matter of Law, he recalled the attention the pair attracted in Jackson, Miss., while trying a case there.
“Neither blacks nor whites had seen a black woman lawyer before,” he wrote. “Blacks crowded the courtroom, and the trial became public theater. They took vicarious pride in our performances in court and re-enacted scenes from the trial in barbershops and beauty parlors, at parties, in backyards.”
I had the privilege of introducing Judge Carter at the recent National Book Festival in Washington. One of the last living legal giants of the civil rights struggle, he was part of a dream team of lawyers during the glory days of the LDF. Along with Motley, he worked with such luminaries as Thurgood Marshall and William H. Hastie.
“I did not have the desire or personality to be a civil rights leader who could stir the masses to action,” he writes, “but I could aim to become one of the best civil rights lawyers in the country.”
He did just that, arguing 22 cases before the Supreme Court and winning 21. Carter served as general counsel of the NAACP before joining a private firm and then being appointed to the federal bench in 1972.
Now 88, the judge walks carefully and speaks softly, yet his voice easily conveys dignity and authority. During his talk at the festival, it was easy to hear him except for an awkward interval when antiwar protesters, also gathering on the Mall, marched by, beating drums and ringing cowbells. It was a painful irony: earnest demonstrators drowning out an eloquent champion of the First Amendment.
We faced no such distractions when I followed up our brief meeting with a phone call after Motley’s death.
“Judge Motley was a very close friend of mine,” Carter told me. “We worked together very well.”
The two went separate ways in 1957, when the Legal Defense Fund acrimoniously split from the NAACP. Motley stayed with the LDF while Carter remained with the NAACP. But Carter and Motley maintained their friendship.
“I’m very saddened by her death,” the judge continued, “and I’m shocked. I heard that she was ill one day, and the next day she was gone. It’s a great loss for civil rights.”
Carter’s book is in many ways a wistful song of praise to Motley, Marshall and all the lawyers who helped break the back of Jim Crow. Carter calls them “social engineers” who fulfilled the vision of Charles Hamilton Houston, a brilliant lawyer and professor who trained many of them at Howard University Law School.
The judge told me that Houston’s vision is as essential today as it was then. “My feeling about this is if you try to make progress, people are going to resist your ideas, and you can’t let that discourage you.”
Constance Baker Motley never did.
A former reporter for the American, Jabari Asim is a columnist for the Washington Post. His e-mail address is asimj@washpost.com.