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

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

By 1962, King had become, by the media's reckoning, the new civil rights leader.
Constance Baker Motley

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

I soon found law school an unmitigated bore.
Constance Baker Motley

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

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

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

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

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

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

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