Constance Baker Motley

As the NAACP Legal Defense Fund's (LDF) first female attorney, Constance Baker Motley (September 14, 1921 - September 28, 2005) was a key architect in the fight for desegregation in the South. The first Black woman ever to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, in Meredith v. Fair she won James Meredith's effort to be the first Black student to attend the University of Mississippi in 1962. The first Black female federal judge, Motley handed down a breakthrough decision for vomen in sports reporting in 1978, ruling that a female reporter must be allowed into a Major League Baseball locker room. Elected on February 4, 1964, she wan the first Black woman to sit in the New York State Senate and devoted much of her time advocating for housing equality for Black and Latino, low-income tenants.