With her appointment to the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York on January 25, 1966, Constance Baker Motley (1921–2005; Columbia Law School 1946, 2003) became the first African American woman appointed to the federal judiciary. She was appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson. When Judge Motley became Chief Judge on June 1, 1982, she was the first woman and the first African American woman to serve as such for the Southern District of New York, the largest federal trial bench in the country. She so served until October 1, 1986, when she assumed senior status.
Constance Baker was born on September 14, 1921, in New Haven, Connecticut. She graduated from New York University in 1943. In 1946, she received her law degree from Columbia University, and married real estate and insurance broker, Joel Wilson Motley. Motley joined the legal staff of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. when she was a senior at Columbia University School of Law. Subsequently, as associate counsel, she became its principal trial attorney.
From 1945 to 1964, Judge Motley worked on all of the major school segregation cases supported by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. She wrote the legal brief for the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education case and helped strategize on other important legal precedents. Among the cases in which she played a prominent role were desegregation cases involving universities of Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Oklahoma, and Georgia, and Clemson College in South Carolina.