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.

About Constance Baker Motley

Constance Baker Motleywas an American jurist and politician who served as a Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.
A key strategist of the civil rights movement, she was state senator, and Borough President of Manhattan in New York City before becoming a United States federal judge.

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More quotes from Constance Baker Motley

Whites would rather not be involved in race matters, I think.

Constance Baker Motley

American politician and judge (1921-2005)

I grew up in a house where nobody had to tell me to go to school every day and do my homework.

Constance Baker Motley

American politician and judge (1921-2005)

The fact is that racism, despite all the doomsayers, has diminished.

Constance Baker Motley

American politician and judge (1921-2005)

The black population now consists of two distinct classes-the middle class and the poor.

Constance Baker Motley

American politician and judge (1921-2005)

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.

Constance Baker Motley

American politician and judge (1921-2005)

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

Constance Baker Motley

American politician and judge (1921-2005)

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

Constance Baker Motley

American politician and judge (1921-2005)

King thought he understood the white Southerner, having been born and reared in Georgia and trained a theologian.

Constance Baker Motley

American politician and judge (1921-2005)

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

Constance Baker Motley

American politician and judge (1921-2005)

How long must the American community afford special treatment to blacks?

Constance Baker Motley

American politician and judge (1921-2005)

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

Constance Baker Motley

American politician and judge (1921-2005)

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

Constance Baker Motley

American politician and judge (1921-2005)

I remember being infuriated from the top of my head to the tip of my toes the first time a screen was put around Bob Carter and me on a train leaving Washington in the 1940s.

Constance Baker Motley

American politician and judge (1921-2005)

Too many whites still see blacks as a group apart.

Constance Baker Motley

American politician and judge (1921-2005)

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

Constance Baker Motley

American politician and judge (1921-2005)

Today’s white majority is largely silent about the race question.

Constance Baker Motley

American politician and judge (1921-2005)

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

Constance Baker Motley

American politician and judge (1921-2005)

The Constitution, as originally drawn, made no reference to the fact that all Americans wre considered equal members of society.

Constance Baker Motley

American politician and judge (1921-2005)

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

Constance Baker Motley

American politician and judge (1921-2005)

All Southern state colleges and universities are open to black students.

Constance Baker Motley

American politician and judge (1921-2005)

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

Constance Baker Motley

American politician and judge (1921-2005)

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

Constance Baker Motley

American politician and judge (1921-2005)

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

Constance Baker Motley

American politician and judge (1921-2005)

I soon found law school an unmitigated bore.

Constance Baker Motley

American politician and judge (1921-2005)

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

Constance Baker Motley

American politician and judge (1921-2005)

The legal difference between the sit-ins and the Freedom Riders was significant.

Constance Baker Motley

American politician and judge (1921-2005)

I never thought I would live long enough to see the legal profession change to the extent it has.

Constance Baker Motley

American politician and judge (1921-2005)

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

Constance Baker Motley

American politician and judge (1921-2005)

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.

Constance Baker Motley

American politician and judge (1921-2005)

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

Constance Baker Motley

American politician and judge (1921-2005)

When I was 15, I decided I wanted to be a lawyer. No one thought this was a good idea.

Constance Baker Motley

American politician and judge (1921-2005)

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

Constance Baker Motley

American politician and judge (1921-2005)

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

Constance Baker Motley

American politician and judge (1921-2005)

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 trial.

Constance Baker Motley

American politician and judge (1921-2005)

Affirmitive action is extremely complex because it appears in many different forms.

Constance Baker Motley

American politician and judge (1921-2005)

My parents never told us that our great-grandmothers had been slaves.

Constance Baker Motley

American politician and judge (1921-2005)

I rejected the notion that my race or sex would bar my success in life.

Constance Baker Motley

American politician and judge (1921-2005)

Had it not been for James Meredith, who was willing to risk his life, the University of Mississippi would still be all white.

Constance Baker Motley

American politician and judge (1921-2005)

The middle class, in the white population, encompasses a wide swath.

Constance Baker Motley

American politician and judge (1921-2005)

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.

Constance Baker Motley

American politician and judge (1921-2005)

My father kept his distance from working-class American blacks.

Constance Baker Motley

American politician and judge (1921-2005)

We Americans entered a new phase in our history – the era of integration – in 1954.

Constance Baker Motley

American politician and judge (1921-2005)