Constance Motley Named Federal Judge

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NAACP 

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Legal Defense and Educational Fund 
PRESS RELEASE Sheree 
President ‘ . THURSDAY 
. as cence E. Rivers September 1, 1966 
Director-Counse 
Jack Greenberg 

CONSTANCE MOTLEY NAMED FEDERAL JUDGE 

NEW YCRK--'The Cinderalla story,' as Mrs, Constance Baker Motley 

likes to refer to her life, has finally come to a_ happy ending. 

The U. S. Senate yesterday confirmed by a voice vote 

the nomination of Mrs, Motley, the first Negro woman to the 

Federal District Court bench, 

The news caused a great deal of excitement at the New 

York headquarters of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, 

Inc., which has on previous occasions seen similar appointments 

of staff members to important Federal offices. The most note- 

worthy »°f which was the appointment of the former Director-Counsel 

Thurgood Marshall to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals Judge- 

ship. Mr, Marshall now serves as the U. S, Solicitor General. 

Another Legal Defense Fund colleague of iirs. Motlely 

to achieve distinction was Edward Dudley, former Manhattan Borough 

President, and now a State Supreme Court justice. 

Mrs. Motley, nationally known for her string of civil 

rights legal victories, served in the Legal Defense Fund's number 

two administrative post prior to her entry into public life. 

As a federal judge, hirs, Motley will have to take a 

$5,000 cut from the $35,000 a year she now makes as Manhattan 

Borough President. However, the judgeship is a lifetime position. 

A New Haven benefactor helped launch Mrs. Motley on her 

career, but her colleagues at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educa- 

tional Fund, Inc., where she championed the cause of civil rights 

for more than 20 years, know that Connie Motley wrote her own 

success story. 

The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. 

is not synonymous with the NAACP, 

The Legal Defense Fund was set up in 1939 as a separate 

unit. We have separate offices, separate staffs, separate Board 

of Directors and budget. 
se? 

Jesse DeVore, Jr., Director of Public Information—Night Number 212 niGQE Seag7 



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Constance Motley Named Federal 
Judge -2- September 1, 1966 

Although always a top student in public schools in her 

native New Haven, Mrs. Motley's chances for attending college 

appeared dim. 

Her father, a chef, could not hope to finance her college 

education while supporting his other 11 children. 

But one night a wealthy New Haven contractor heard her 

"sound off" as she puts it, during a discussion of why Negroes 

were not more active. 

Impressed with the clarity and logic of her words, the 

contractor offered to finance her education. “It was like a fairy 

tale, " Mrs, Motley later remarked. 

She attended Fisk University, but after a year and a 

half transferred to New York University where she earned a degree 

in economics. 

From there she went to Columbia University Law School 

"because Abraham Lincoln believed law is difficult and I want to 

do something difficult," she said. She took her law degree in 

1946, and has been doing difficult things ever since. 

While still at Columbia, she joined the Legal Defense 

Fund as a law clerk. After graduation, she married Joel fiotley, 

and plunged full-time into the civil rights struggle as a Legal 

Defense Fund staff lawyer. 

With vigor and determination, the lady lawyer carved a 

reputation for herself as one of the nation's leading civil right 

attorneys. She rose to Associate Counsel, the number two post 

in the Legal Defense Fund behind Jack Greenberg, who succeeded 

Mr. Marshall as Director-Counsel. 

She went before the U. S. Supreme Court six times, win- 

ning all six cases. A seventh Supreme Court case she won without 

argument. 

But it was her masterful handling of the complex legal 

action that led to the enrollment of James Meredith in the Univer- 

sity of Mississippi that catapaulted her to national fame. 

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Constance Motley Named Federal 
Judge -3- September 1, 1966 

Of that feat, Burke Marshall, then head of the Civil Rights 
Division of the U. S. Department of Justice, said, "We couldn't 
have asked for anyone better, she could work for anyone." 

Mrs. Motley also led the legal teams that broke down the 
barriers of seqregation at the University of Alabama (despite Gov. 
George Wallace's abortive stand in the doorway), Universities 
of Georgia and Florida and Clemson College, South Carolina. 

On the lower education level, she led the Legal Defense 
Fund fights that ended school segregation in Atlanta and Savannah, 
Ga.; Pensacola, Tallahassee, Jacksonville, Daytona Beach and Tampa, 
Fla.; Chattanooga and Memphis, Tenn.; Mobile, Huntsville and 
Birmingham, Ala.; Hillsboro, Ohio; New Rochelle, Hempstead and 
Amityville, N. Y. and Englewood, N. J. 

The list of Mrs. Motley's courtroom victories encompasses 
nearly every area of racial strife--housing, transportation, public 
accommodations, sit-ins, mass demonstrations and criminal prose- 
cutions,. 

She has personally defended prosecutions of the Rev. Dr. 
Martin Luther King as well as scores of lesser known civil rights 
activists. 

After being assured that public service would not inter- 
fere with her Legal Defense Fund activities, Mrs. Motley entered 
the political arena in 1964, becoming the first Negro woman to 
serve in the New York State Senate, 

She resigned from the Legal Defense Fund when she was 
appointed Manhattan's first lady president early in 1965, and 
won a landslide reelection to that post last November. 

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