On July 9, 1949, Constance Baker Motley argued her first civil rights case as a young attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, beginning a career that would produce more courtroom victories against racial segregation than almost any other lawyer of her era.

Motley grew up in New Haven, Connecticut, and was turned away from the local YMCA as a teenager because of her race. A local businessman noticed her intelligence and paid her way through Columbia Law School. She graduated in 1946 and joined Thurgood Marshall's team at the NAACP.

Over the next two decades she argued and won cases that desegregated universities across the South — including the University of Mississippi, which admitted James Meredith in 1962 under her litigation. She argued ten cases before the Supreme Court and won nine of them. She helped write the brief for Brown v. Board of Education.

In 1964, she was elected to the New York State Senate, the first Black woman to hold that seat. In 1965, Lyndon Johnson appointed her to the federal bench — the first Black woman appointed to the federal judiciary in United States history. She served as a federal judge for 40 years, including as Chief Judge of the Southern District of New York.

She died in 2005.