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All Of It with Alison Stewart
Constance Baker Motley takes on 'Brown v. Board of Education,' Other Cases (Full Bio)
00:22:20
Historian Tomiko Brown-Nagin discusses the early days of Constance Baker Motley's legal career and some of the major cases in which she was involved.
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Tamiko Brown Nagin
Listener Support WNYC Studios welcome back to.
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Alison Stewart
All of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. I'm so grateful to be spending part of Martin Luther King Jr. Day with you. Last hour we spent some time discussing the critically acclaimed biography A Life by Jonathan Eige. It was long listed for the 2023 National Book Award. If you'd like to hear the full 90ish minute interview, you can check out our website to listen to those conversations. If you miss them, you can go to wnyc.org all of it and this hour we continue the theme of civil rights with the author of the book Civil Rights Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality by Tamiko Brown Nagin, Dean of the Radcliff Institute for Advanced Study and Constitutional Law professor at Harvard. Constance Baker Motley was the first Black woman to work on a case before the Supreme Court. In 1964, she became the first black woman elected to the New York state Senate. In 1965, she became the first woman and black person to serve as Manhattan Borough president. And in 1968, President Johnson named her to the federal bench for the Southern District of New York, making her the first black black woman federal judge. And during her career, she found herself representing a young civil rights leader named Martin Luther King. When now Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson accepted her nomination to the highest court in the land, she invoked Baker Motley's name. So let's hear some highlights from my conversation about Baker Motley's legal career. I began by asking Brown Nagin to explain the NAACP's legal defense fund, through which Baker Motley took on some of the most important cases of the civil rights movement.
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Tamiko Brown Nagin
The NAACP Legal Defense Fund, or the INC Fund, as it also was called, was the legal arm of the naacp, the nation's oldest civil rights organization that had as its mission improving the lives of black Americans. The INC Fund sought to improve black lives through the legal process by filing cases that was meant to undermine Jim Crow, the system of racial segregation and racial oppression as it was manifested throughout society and the educational system and employment in the political system in anywhere that one might think of. All of those institutions were infected with racial bias. And the Ink Fund was the most vital organization fighting for racial and social change through the law.
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Interviewer
What was Thurgood Marshall's role at the time at the legal Defense Fund and NAACP when he first met Constance Baker? What was his position?
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Tamiko Brown Nagin
Thurgood Marshall was the head of the Ink Fund and its standard bearer. He would go on to argue Brown versus Board of Education along with some other colleagues, and became known as Mr. Civil Rights. He was a terrifically important figure in the history of American law and in African American history. And his meeting with Constance Baker Motley changed her life. She says many times, if it hadn't been for Thurgood Marshall, no one ever would have heard of Constance Baker Motley. And so he was a vitally important figure in racial change in this country.
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Interviewer
She would always cite him as one of the few men who would hire women. But, you know, the legend about Thurgood Marshall is he liked. He liked a couple of drops to drink. He also likely to admire women. And he asked her to do some, you know, one of those things that men did at the time. He assessed her physically, we'll put it that way. What did he see in her, in her mind, that he knew she was special?
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Tamiko Brown Nagin
Well, she was so intelligent, and it was obvious when one heard her speak, and she was ambitious. After all, it was transgressive for her to be in law school and to find her way to the offices of the Ink Fund and to want to work in the struggle for equality. And so he saw what everyone saw, which was this extraordinarily talented young woman, ambitious, committed, and she was a great choice to bring along to the team of lawyers who were, as Jack Greenberg, one of them, called, a dedicated band struggling for civil rights.
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Interviewer
Her first courtroom experience took place in Mississippi to take on a lawsuit involving equal pay for black teachers. The plaintiff was Gladys Knoll Bates. Who was Gladys and what did she want?
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Tamiko Brown Nagin
Gladys was a schoolteacher in the Jackson system, well educated one. She had family connections to the naacp. And she wanted to be paid according to her worth. She wanted to be paid according to the same criteria as white teachers. And she was not. And so she signed onto this case brought by the NAACP lawyers challenging the race based pay differentials used not only by the Jackson school system system, but throughout the south. And that is the case that Motley litigated along with her colleague Bob Carter in Jackson, Mississippi.
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Interviewer
This is a sentence I underlined three times in your book, Civil rights Queen. You write that Motley and Robert Carter were the first black lawyers to appear in a Mississippi courtroom since Reconstruction. It's an amazing sentence. And you describe their reception and all the indignities and this is an odd question, I know, but which one of these indignities did you think was most interesting?
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Tamiko Brown Nagin
Well, it actually is the contrast between Motley and Carter and how they carry themselves despite the racial hostility and the posture of Jess Brown. Jess Brown is a black Mississippi lawyer who does not normally appear in the courtroom. He is relegated to other sorts of matters. And yet the NAACP lawyers, when they go to these states, they have to have local counsel. So Jess Brown sits at the council table with them, but he sits on the far side of it. And he does something that is just extraordinary every time I think about it, which is instead of walking upright, he bends himself at the waist in order to display his subservience before the crowd of white lawyers and the white judge. He knows his place. And that reality just captures the moment, the historical moment and the extraordinary racial oppression in this region of the country. And what Motley was up against, not only as an African American, but as a woman. And another scene I'll discuss, Ellison is how these lawyers couldn't even purchase food. They couldn't eat in restaurants, white owned restaurants, or sleep in white owned hotels. And there's a scene where if they're not going to get a full lunch, they wanted to get some fruit from a fruit stand. And they go in and the proprietor is disrespectful to Bob Carter. Bob Carter had served in the U.S. army. He was such a. Just a wonderful and proud man. And I knew him personally. I clerked for him on the US District Court in New York. And the person who was supposed to be waiting on him is disrespectful to him. And Motley, who's standing beside him, can feel his body tense up. And she wants to say something, she wants to speak out in the face of this disrespect. But he says to her, he makes a gesture as if to say to her, no, no, don't speak. It's not worth it. We're here to do a job and we cannot be riled up by racism. And so that too just captures the reality of the situation. They are there fighting on behalf of these black school teachers, but also Allison on their own behalf. So they experience some of the same indignities as their own clients, which is just an extraordinary thing to ponder.
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Interviewer
My guest is Dean Tamiko Brown Nagin. We're speaking about her book, Civil Rights Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality is our choice. For this month's full bio, Just want to take a. Take a little bit of a turn and talk about how Motley had her own issues around equity in the workplace with the Legal Defense Fund and the naacp. What was the biggest obstacle, or maybe who was the biggest obstacle to her getting the recognition and equal financial compensation?
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Tamiko Brown Nagin
Yes, well, this is ironic indeed. The story I'll recount, which is after she leaves Jackson, Mississippi, where she's been fighting on behalf of these black school teachers who sought equal pay, she marches into Thurgood Marshall's office and says to him, well, she's not being paid what she should, and she doesn't have the title that she should at the INK Fund. And she requests. She demands equity for herself. And eventually Marshall does, and the naacp. Roy Wilkins is the head of the organization at this time. Her salaries increased and her title is changed. And that. That story just goes to show how even at this organization, there were blind spots because of gender and race and the combination of gender and race. And so she's fighting a battle for equal pay, even in the civil rights organization. And it's. That's remarkable, remarkable story.
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Interviewer
Brown versus Board of Education. I think we all, obviously, we all learned about it in school. And if you think about, okay, who are the lawyers in Brown vs. Board of Education? Thurgood Marshall and James Nesbitt. And maybe George E.C. hayes will come to mind, or Spotswood Robinson. I think, yes, you can name off several men, but Constance Baker Motley was integral to Brown versus Board of Education. Why don't people know her name in connection with this pivotal case?
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Tamiko Brown Nagin
I would say for two reasons. First of all, unlike those men, she didn't actually argue the case in the Supreme Court. She played a supportive role, vitally important role, helping. Well, she wrote the original complaint in the Brown cases, which is the legal document that sets out the cause of action. Vitally important. And she helped do research for the briefs and did a lot of grunt work like proofing the briefs, so she didn't have the star role at the Supreme Court. And second, it's because of gender. In our society, those who are deemed worthy of historical remembrance all too often are men. And that's true even in the scholarship on the civil rights movement, where figures like Thurgood Marshall and Martin Luther King Jr. Have become household names. But not Constance Baker Motley. And only relatively recently are we learning about other significant women figures like Pauli Murray, Ella Baker. Rosa Parks is well known. And yet the story that we tell about Rosa Parks is In many ways consistent with a traditional gender narrative, even if it wasn't reality. And so it comes down to gender. I would say.
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Interviewer
Motley faced hostility in Southern courtrooms because of her race and gender. Judges and officials often referred to Motley as she rather than use her surname. The first case we'll hear about involved two young women, one named Polly Myers and the other authorine Lucy, who wanted to attend the University of Alabama. Motley misjudged something in the case, as we'll hear, a mistake she would not repeat when she fought for Hamilton Holmes and Charlene Hunter to attend the University of Georgia. So she submitted an application to University of Alabama that made no mention of race. Why did she do this?
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Tamiko Brown Nagin
Well, she wanted to continue her education, and she wanted to do it and was inspired to do it in part because of her friend Pollyanne Meyer, who was also a. Who also made an application to the University of Alabama. And the story that I tell about this effort is that it ends up failing and along two dimensions. First of all, Pollyann Meyer ends up being dropped from the case. And this is after the lawyers for the University of Alabama claim that she has misrepresented herself. And this is related to their discovery that she had had a child before she was married and she had a different marital name. And so they assassinate her character. And frankly, Motley and other civil rights lawyers working on the case don't protest too much because they believe in the politics of respectability, where the idea that women needed to be virginal and virtuous and was accepted. And so Pollyann Meyer is dropped, Authoring Lucy continues in the case, but she too is turned away from the University of Alabama. There's a riot. Motley and some other and Thurgood Marshall make a claim about the university president conspiring with rioters. And this ends up being too much. She can't prove it. And the NAACP ends up having to apologize. And the case ends. And Arthurine Lucy is. She's pretty devastated by all of this. Just the attention, the violence, the backlash. It is a. An example I write in the book about how these plaintiffs in these cases suffer so much in the cause of equality. And also just that the cases didn't always succeed. And even someone like Constance Baker Motley makes mistakes.
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Interviewer
Yeah, I'm so glad you brought that up, because I was going to ask about sort of the dark notes of the authorine Lucy case, this idea that Polly Myers would be. Would be dropped and that people wouldn't think that much of it, that the organization Civil Rights Organizations at this time really wanted almost perfect clients. You know, was that a necessary evil at the time?
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Tamiko Brown Nagin
The lawyers would say, yes, it was. That in order, these cases were hard. They were up against the law. They were up against often violent backlash, against even victories in court. And they needed the plaintiffs to be, as you say, nearly perfect. And so they were excited, so excited to encounter Charlene Hunter Galt and Hamilton Holmes in the University of Georgia case. They were what you might call all American except for their race. They were perfect, great students and involved in school extracurriculars. And frankly, those kind of plaintiffs made the cases easier. And so, yes, a necessary evil in the context of white resistance to the struggle for black equality.
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Interviewer
I'm going to get to the Georgia case in just a moment. I want to wrap up with authorine Lucy's case. The miscalculation that Motley made, the overreach that she made, the accusations she made. What happened there? Why do you think she made this particular error?
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Tamiko Brown Nagin
Well, I don't think that the idea was outlandish, that is, that people at the university were conspiring with those who were engaged in violent backlash against her client. Because at the time, it was the case that, for instance, white citizens councils comprised of upstanding figures in the white community often were in cahoots with the more violent figures and. And people who weren't so upstanding. And so it's not an outlandish claim to make. It's that she couldn't prove the claim, and for that reason it was overreach. And these lawyers just couldn't afford to make mistakes like that. And so this case concluded in defeat, and the university isn't. There's a second case that has to be filed against the University of Alabama and that ultimately desegregates the university. And that's in the mid. In the 60s. And so it takes many years to recover and achieve the goal that authoring Lucy sought so many years before.
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Alison Stewart
That was part of my conversation with historian Tamika Brown Nagin about the subject of her book, which is called Civil Rights Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality. We'll hear more of that conversation after a quick break. This is all of it.
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Tamiko Brown Nagin
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