Mayor Wagner's Memorial to Medgar Evers

Steven A. Levine, 

Coordinator for Educational Programs

Fifty years ago, Mississippi NAACP leader Medgar Evers was assassinated as he left his car in front of his home in Jackson.  This horrific act of violence was one of many outrages against human rights and dignity in 1963, including Bull Connor's use of dogs and fire hoses against civil rights demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama.  Mayor Robert F. Wagner spoke before the NAACP's NYC Department of Welfare branch on June 27, 1963.  Remembering the courage of Evers, Wagner reminded his audience that Evers was a martyr because "if he continued to do what he was doing, he would likely be killed -- and he kept right on doing it."  He implored his audience to remember that "It was up to us to see -- as he knew it would be -- he did not die in vain"  (To read his full speech click here.)

Living in a nation today where poverty, racism, sexism and homophobia still threaten the lives and well being of millions, we must remember Medgar Evers and redouble our own efforts to fight for the ideals for which gave up his life.  

NAACP Attorney Constance Baker Motley Confronts Racism at "Ole Miss"

Steven A. Levine
Coordinator for Educational Programs

When Constance Baker Motley began working for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in the late 1940s, there were few women lawyers in the United States and only a handful of African-American women lawyers. Motley had the intelligence and determination to overcome both those barriers and become one of the leading civil rights attorneys in the nation. The Archives’ new video, “NAACP Attorney Constance Baker Motley Confronts Racism at Ole Miss,” shows her facing down racist protesters in Mississippi while representing James Meredith in the University of Mississippi desegregation case in the early 1960s.

In this video, her son Joel describes her strength of character and ability to see past the virulent racism and violence around her. At the same time, Motley was able to support plaintiffs like Meredith and Charlayne Hunter-Gault and Hamilton Homes at the University of Georgia through the trials they faced in breaking down the walls of segregation and racism embedded in the foundations of the United States.

Constance Baker Motley’s accomplishments have often been overshadowed in the historical memory by her mentor, Justice Thurgood Marshall. But as an attorney who won 9 out of 10 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, we should remember her importance to the civil rights movement, especially during Women’s History Month. Moreover, with the support of Mayor Robert F. Wagner, she became the first African-American woman elected to the NY State Senate and the first woman elected Manhattan borough president. After her sojourn in New York politics, President Johnson appointed Motley to be the first African-American federal judge. She was truly a trail blazer in a pre-feminist era. (You can learn more about Motley’s appointment to the federal bench and how it became enveloped in the conflict between Senator Robert Kennedy and President Johnson in the Archives’ video “Lyndon Johnson Appoints Constance Baker Motley to be a Federal Judge.”)

I hope you will take the time to watch both videos and use them in your classrooms. (You can also learn more about Fannie Lou Hamer, another pioneering woman in the civil rights movement, in the Archives’ Mississippi Freedom Summer lesson.) If you have any questions about Constance Baker Motley, the videos, or want to bring a class to the Archives, please free to contact me in the comments or at slevine@lagcc.cuny.edu 

Constance Baker Motley and Thurgood Marshall

Constance Baker Motley, James Meredith and Jack Greenberg

Steven A. Levine

Coordinator for Educational Programs

The Archives recently conducted an oral history with Joel Motley about his mother Constance Baker Motley, the great NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) lawyer and federal judge. We asked him specifically whether Thurgood Marshall had passed her over to be director of the LDF when he left in 1961 to a federal judgeship on the U.S. Court of Appeals. He said that Marshall probably thought that it would have been “an extra burden” for an African-American woman to take on that role at that time. (Click here to watch the video.)

I was reading Judge Motley’s autobiography today, Equal Justice Under the Law, and found that she largely agreed with her son, but that there was another layer to the decision related to the competition between Marshall and Robert Carter, the general counsel of the NAACP which was separate from the LDF. Marshall mistakenly thought Motley was aligned with Carter and instead turned to their LDF colleague Jack Greenberg to be his successor at the LDF. Interestingly, Bella Abzug supported Motley, as did Mississippi NAACP leader Medgar Evers. (To read the excerpt from Motley’s autobiography, click here.)

As we in the Northeast wait out the blizzard, it’s a good moment to think about how we can learn from different sources and how we can teach ourselves and our students about the nature of sources and how to interpret them. If you would like to learn more about the civil rights movement, check out our primary source lesson on Mississippi Freedom Summer. As always, please feel free to contact me if you want to learn more about this or any other Archives related topics.