Constance Baker Motley

“We African Americans have now spent the major part of the 20th Century battling racism.”

“Doing away with separate black colleges meets resistance from alumni and other blacks.”

“I got the chance to argue my first case in Supreme Court, a criminal case arising in Alabama that involved the right of a defendant to counsel at a critical stage in a capital case before a...”

“In my view, I did not get to the federal bench because I was a woman.”

“Living at the YMCA in Harlem dramatically broadened my view of the world.”

“The last state to admit a black student to the college level was South Carolina.”

“King consciously steered away from legal claims and instead relied on civil disobedience.”

“Sexism, like racism, goes with us into the next century. I see class warfare as overshadowing both.”

“Columbia Law School men were being drafted, and suddenly women who had done well in college were considered acceptable candidates for the vacant seats.”

“New Orleans may well have been the most liberal Deep South city in 1954 because of its large Creole population, the influence of the French, and its cosmopolitan atmosphere.”

“Lack of encouragement never deterred me. I was the kind of person who would not be put down.”

“The women's rights movement of the 1970s had not yet emerged; except for Bella Abzug, I had no women supporters.”

“There is no longer a single common impediment to blacks emerging in this society.”

“In high school, I won a prize for an essay on tuberculosis. When I got through writing the essay, I was sure I had the disease.”

“We knew then what we know now; only exemplary blacks are acceptable.”

“When Thurgood Marshall became a lawyer, race relations in the United States were particularly bad.”

“There appears to be no limit as to how far the women's revolution will take us.”

“I was born and raised in the oldest settled part of the nation and in an environment in which racism was officially mooted.”

“In high school, I discovered myself. I was interested in race relations and the legal profession. I read about Lincoln and that he believed the law to be the most difficult of professions.”

“By 1962, King had become, by the media's reckoning, the new civil rights leader.”