I had the opportunity to attend "The Life of Constance Baker Motley:Civil Rights Lawyer and Federal Judge" on Friday September 18,2009. I have had to take a few days to post this blog, for the affect on me is still very profound. I have blessedly realized however that this emboldened aching in the bones is not a temporal feeling. It is easy to say the Lani Guinier,Skip Gates Charles "Tree" Ogletree,Drew Days, Vernon Jordan Charlayne Hunter- Gault,Calvin Trillin,Derrick Bell,Elaine Jones, Ernie Green,Juan Williams, Derrick Bell and others of significant note came out to play in public for all to see and to sing arias re the impact of Connie on their lives due to her most worthy legacy.
But for little old New Haven County to host such an illustrious gathering is certainly a testimony to the fervor embodied by Quinnipiac Law Professor Marilyn Ford. She truly reenacted the role of an underground railroad modern day engineer in orchestrating this Freedom Song Symphony. Go down Moses was not sung in the literal sense but the refrains,cadences, laughters,smiles, hugs and handshakes before, during, throughout,in between, in the hallways and on the University's pristine lawn enveloped everyone in reciting the same spirituals, revising We Shall Overcome and referencing same African-Methodist-Quaker-Episcopal-Zion-Baptist hymnal.
The spirit of that day wove around and through everyone, and turning the collective consciousness in one fell swoop away from the passing notion of a post racial society, and more appropriately redirected your senses to the reality in true Sankofa-Congo-Kemet fashion of looking backwards and keeping in focus the present and future at the same time.
Parts of the life of Contance Baker Motley lives in all of us. This documented and contentious journey from the East African Ancestor Eve Mother of us all to today or whenever you read this blog stirs within your soul. Whether the freedom spirit-Make me Free lament of Kali in her letter to John Quincy Adams awakes in your moments of solitude or is recognized by you in bright daylight remains your personal decision.Nonetheless a major Crispus Attucks-Cinque-Nat Turner-CT 29th-Massachusetts 54th 21 Gun salute goes out to Professor Ford and the Quinnipiac team for reenacting,remembering, reviving,renewing and enabling all in attendance to rededicate themselves to freedom and justice for all. Constance Baker Motley would want that.
Quinnipiac University School of Law to present symposium “The Life of Constance Baker Motley: Civil Rights Lawyer and Federal Judge” Friday Sept. 18
For immediate release
Quinnipiac University School of Law to present symposium
“The Life of Constance Baker Motley:
Civil Rights Lawyer and Federal Judge” Friday Sept. 18
Hamden, Conn. – Sept. 16, 2009 - An esteemed panel of former colleagues, associates and beneficiaries of the tireless efforts of Constance Baker Motley will gather in Alumni Hall at Quinnipiac University on Friday, Sept. 18, for a day-long symposium on the late civil rights lawyer and federal judge’s life and career.The symposium, “The Life of Constance Baker Motley: Civil Rights Lawyer and Federal Judge” will take place from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Quinnipiac University Law Professor Marilyn Ward Ford planned the symposium, which is being presented by the Quinnipiac University School of Law and Yale Law School.
Among the more notable panelists scheduled to take part are:
Henry Louis Gates, Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, Harvard University
Lani Guinier, Bennett Boskey Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
Charlayne Hunter-Gault, Emmy award-winning journalist
Elaine Jones, Esq., former president and director-counsel NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund
Vernon Jordan, senior managing director, Lazard Frères & Co. LLC; former president of the National Urban League; and former presidential adviser
Charles Ogletree, the Jesse Climenko Professor of Law and director, Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard University
Douglas Schoen, author and campaign consultant
Calvin Trillin, journalist and author
Motley, who received the Presidential Citizens Medal from President Bill Clinton in 2001, played a major role in attempts to end racial discrimination in the United States. She represented James Meredith in the integration of the University of Mississippi, Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes in the integration of the University of Georgia, and the Little Rock Nine in the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Ark. She also represented Martin Luther King and protestors who participated in marches and other forms of civil disobedience as well as the "Freedom Riders” and the students jailed after staging sit-ins at segregated lunch counters throughout the South.
As the NAACP Legal Defense Fund's associate counsel, Motley participated in writing the briefs for Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kan., the landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court case that ended school segregation.
She went on to break down other gender and race barriers as the first African-American woman elected to the New York state senate (1964) and to the Manhattan borough presidency (1965). Appointed to a judgeship for the Southern District of New York in 1966, she became the first African-American woman on the federal bench and, in 1982, the first African-American woman to serve as chief judge. Motley assumed senior judge status in 1986. She died in 2005.
The symposium will feature panel discussions on Motley’s roles and influence on the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund; The University of Georgia Case, which led to the desegregation of the university in 1961; New York politics; and the federal court system. The documentary, “The Life and Career of Judge Constance Baker Motley,” featuring Juan Williams, the author and political analyst for the Fox News Channel and National Public Radio, will be shown. The School of Communications at Quinnipiac produced the documentary.
In addition, Guinier will discuss “Constance Baker Motley as a Role Model and Trailblazer” before Joel Motley, the son of Constance Baker Motley, and Marilyn Ford, the Quinnipiac University law professor who organized the symposium, make closing remarks.
This is an invitation-only event. For more information, please contact Professor Marilyn Ward Ford at Marilyn.Ford@quinnipiac.edu.
Quinnipiac University is a private, coeducational, nonsectarian institution located in Hamden, Connecticut, which is uniquely near New York, New Haven, and Boston. The School of Law Center opened in 1995 and now enrolls about 400 students pursuing either a juris doctor degree or a joint JD/MBA degree. The university offers concentrations in civil advocacy and dispute resolution, criminal law and advocacy, family and juvenile law, health law, intellectual property, and tax. The School of Law also boasts many externships and in-house clinical programs. Quinnipiac is fully approved by the American Bar Association and is a member of the Association of American Law Schools. For more information, please visit, www.law.quinnipiac.edu.
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