The Black Heritage series stamp issued by the United States in 2024 features Constance Baker Motley (born September 14 1921, died September 29 2005), who was the first African-American woman to become a US federal judge – being appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson to the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York on January 25, 1966. She was also the first black woman to be elected to the New York state senate. Among many other groundbreaking achievements, she was also the first woman – of any race – to become president of one of the five boroughs that make up New York city, in her case Manhattan. Motley is widely acknowledged as a major figure in the Civil Rights Movement, especially its legal battles.
Motley was a key architect in the fight for desegregation in the South. From 1945 to 1964, Motley worked on all of the major school desegregation cases brought by LDF (the Legal Defense Fund). She led the litigation of the case that integrated the University of Georgia and directed the legal campaign that resulted in the admission of James H. Meredith to the University of Mississippi in 1962, paving the way for the integration of universities across the south. Motley claimed her greatest professional achievement was the reinstatement of 1,100 Black children in Birmingham who had been expelled for taking part in street demonstrations in the spring of 1963. Motley faced the danger of her work head-on — from driving through Ku Klux Klan territory to defend the right of Black students to attend the University of Georgia to spending hours in county jails across the deep South helping to secure the release of detained civil rights activists like Martin Luther King, Jr.
