Quotes By 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.

The legal difference between the sit-ins and the Freedom Riders was significant.

I was born and raised in the oldest settled part of the nation and in an environment in which racism was officially mooted.

We knew then what we know now; only exemplary blacks are acceptable.

My father kept his distance from working-class American blacks.

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

Living at the YMCA in Harlem dramatically broadened my view of the world.

The last state to admit a black student to the college level was South Carolina.

I grew up in a house where nobody had to tell me to go to school every day and do my homework.

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

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

The middle class, in the white population, encompasses a wide swath.