Wrap this up. H will be signing copies of the book. So if you dont have that, we have copies for everyone in our exhibit hall is just left, right out of the auditorium here. And then that first left there. And thank you all again for coming and enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. I really im carla hayden and im very pleased to welcome you to the law library of congress, 190th anniversary celebrate nation. It was on this day in 1832 that the law Library Congress was created as a depart of the library of congress by statute. Since that time, the law library has grown to be the largest law library in, the world featuring an unparalleled collection of domestic, foreign, international and comparative legal materials. This collection so large that the sub basement stacks of the madison building, which contains most of law librarys collection, is an incredible one and a half football in length. But of course, the impressive are only half the story. The law librarys dedicated staff is what makes this collection accessible to patrons who come from a wide variety of backgrounds ranging from members of all three branches of our government legislative, executive and judicial, to members of the public. They make the collection accessible by providing Reference Services and issuing reports for congress on both u. S. And Foreign International and comparative law, providing webinars on how to research the law maintaining and describe a vast collection of legal materials in a wide variety of languages, is and through large digitization projects such as digitizing the United States serial set to celebrate this momentous occasion. We are so pleased to have with us dean tamiko brown. Megan dean brown. Megan is dean of Harvard Radcliffe institute. Daniel pierce paul professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School and member of the history department. In 2019, she was appointed chair of the presiding annual committee on harvard and the legacy of slavery. She is a member of the American Academy of and sciences. The American Institute and the american philosophical society. A fellow of the american bar and a distinguished lecturer for the organization of american historians, the law library of congress. Ashland below will interview her today, discuss her book, civil rights Queen Constance baker motley and the struggle for equality. Civil rights queen is a book that explores the life and times of Constance Baker motley, the pathbreaking lawyer and judge dean brown. Nagin. Once again, we are so pleased you could join us today. And with that i will turn it over to. Law librarian of congress. Happy anniversary, law. Library of congress. Thank you, dr. Hayden. Afternoon to our audience, our patrons and colleagues, and, of course, to our guest of honor the hill, michael brown. Nagin, dean brown. Nagin, thank you for helping us. Celebrate the library of congress 190th birthday. I just want to remind the audience that they can type their questions into the q a box at the bottom of the screen. And we will address the questions at the end of the program. So our first question is, could you tell us a bit about Constance Baker, motley and your book, civil rights queen . Constance baker motley and the struggle for equality. What drew you to tell Johnson Baker motleys story. Thank you so much. Im delighted to be here to celebrate the law library of Congress Anniversary and to be in conversation with you about my book, civil rights queen. The book is life and times of Constance Baker motley, who was a path breaker in three different realms. First, she was a civil rights lawyer who helped to litigate cases such as brown versus board of education. The case that desegregated ole miss, universe of alabama, university of georgia. And through her work, a civil rights lawyer, she brought, us, the world that we know today, one in which Racial Discrimination is proscribed under law and the achievement by achievement is open to everyone, regardless of and gender. After she had litigated all of those cases changed the world for us. Constance baker motley broke barriers in politics. She was the first woman elected manhattan borough president. She was the first black woman elected to the new york senate. And then after all of that, in 1966, president Lyndon Johnson appointed her a federal, making her the first black woman to occupy such a role. She was appointed to the u. S. District court and then and what drew me to this life. Well it was because when i was researching a prior work, i came to understand that motley had not received the attention, the scholarly attention that she deserves. There had been relatively little written about her. And i thought that the absence of her story in the literature was a kind of historical malpractice. And i also concluded that, unfortunately, her erasure of her lowered visibility likely came down to two gender arms race because in western society its historical significance tends to be accorded to males and womens stories are not highlighted. Thats true of women of all backgrounds. And yet its it was especially notable to me that motley, who was a protege of Thurgood Marshall, worked alongside him and Martin Luther king jr, who was her client . Well known to them, but had been that been featured in the history like these individuals were and thought i wanted to correct that oversight and i thought it particularly unfortunate that the erasure of this woman occurred within the civil rights literature and the legal history, just the same as erasure of women is apparent in other areas of history. So Thurgood Marshall was one of the most influential people in motleys life, hiring her at a time when it was very difficult for a female, a law school graduate, to find work as an attorney. But ultimately, she also had to fight even in own place of work for equal pay within the organization and doubt. She was disappointed when marshall chose jacqueline berg, a white civil rights attorney as his successor. She also faced significant professional setback in that she never did get appointed to the federal court of appeals. How did Constance Baker motley to these challenges and what can we learn from it . Sure. Well, theres a theres a lot there. And let me unpack a little bit first as to the challenges she encountered as a law student, she graduated from columbia law school. And in 1946 and when she went to apply for jobs with law firms, new york city law was the most sector of Legal Profession. She had the closed in her face because she was a woman and, also because she was african american. And this a common experience. It just happen to her. In fact, this continued to happen years later when Ruth Bader Ginsburg came along and sandra day oconnor. So this was the fate of women even those who performed well in law school and who went to these brilliant careers as lawyers. Motley did not let it discourage her that that being shut out of the law firm . In fact, it created an opportunity for her in Public Interest law in 1945. Well she even graduated from law school. She went to the icp Legal Defense fund, asked Thurgood Marshall for a job. She hired her on the spot. It was her dream job because. She had been a person with Strong Social consciousness from, a very young age, and she was delighted to work at the fund. Marshall was a mentor to her and she learned so much from him and in many ways he was progressive on gender, for instance, when she became pregnant around the same time that the acp was litigating versus board of education and it went and down to the Supreme Court twice. He permitted her to go on leave and then come back and i say, permitted might not sound so progressive, but for that era, in fact, it was pretty progressive to have a woman in the office much less, you know, have her going out on maternity and returning to the job. And this really hectic time, the law firm. Nevertheless, thurgood, as you mentioned, also denied her the promotion to his position when he was set to be appointed to the federal bench and was disappointed. She thought that gender was a factor, that race was a factor. So in the denial of her promotion and yet for all of her life, she lifted up Thurgood Marshall. She praised Thurgood Marshall for giving her her big break. In fact, she said, had it not been for Thurgood Marshall, no one ever would have heard of Constance Baker motley. And so she handled it in the way that she handled everything she kept going. She kept going. She was incredibly and of course the failure to that promotion actually an opportunity for her. She was she went into politics after working at the naacp Legal Defense fund for more than 20 years and was a barrier there. And of course she was appointed to the u. S. District court. She was not able to make it to the court of appeals. There are many stories there. Im not sure how much you want me to tell. Suffice it to say that, her practice background as a civil rights lawyer was weaponized against her and also there were those who just didnt want a woman on the court of appeals. Nevertheless, mottley achieved great things and ultimately she was pleased with the history that she had made. So one of the things i noticed in your book, which was really interesting, is that you discussed the intense pressure placed on plaintiffs in civil rights cases, not just the attorneys, but also the clients, and to caught my attention were authoring lucy, who sought admission to Study Library science at the university of alabama and James Meredith, who sought admission to the university of mississippi. And both of these clients were under tremendous pressure from communities that sought resist desegregation with violence. Client management and Emotional Intelligence are often an underappreciated skill set in the law. How did Constance Baker motley help these clients through such trying situations . And what do you think attorneys learn from that . Hmm. Well, thanks for question. I like it a great deal because it does give me the opportunity. Discuss one of the themes of my and that is how much pressure what costs these pioneering plaintiffs had to endure in the course of struggle for civil rights and the case of authoring lucy and her in the her copeland played for a while holly and maya. It the university of alabama case and James Meredith in the university of mississippi or ole miss case point in Different Directions and heres why offering lucy had been prompted to file the case to enter the university of alabama because her friend polly and maya who more of a more of a social activist and something really unfortunate happened to polly and maya during the course of that litigation such that she ended up no longer being a plaintiff in that was that the officials at the university discovered that she had become pregnant before she was married and accused her on that basis of being a person low moral character and the ecp upon being faced with this situation the circumstance dropped maya. And so was left to fight as a plaintiff on her own. It was very difficult for her. She not only was subjected to epithets and threats of violence from whites, but was subjected to criticism from some africanamericans for daring to on this role. Because, of course, in these civil rights cases, the entire community could could be subject to blowback from whites, even if only one individual was, the face of a civil rights case. And so ultimately authoring lucy said that she had had enough and. The university of alabama case, the first one, mottley, was involved in ended without success. It took a second case years during the early 1960s to ultimately desegregate the university of alabama. And what about the James Meredith . So this was another one in which merediths faced tremendous obstacles. And everyone knew that would be the case in fact, when James Meredith wrote a letter to acp Legal Defense fund saying that he wanted to challenge segregation at. Ole miss. Thurgood and everyone else said he has to be crazy because White Supremacy was such a factor in every sector of in mississippi that it was clear someone might get killed might be murdered in the course of this case. And in fact there were, individuals who lost their lives as result of the desegregation of ole miss. And yes, motley was with him all along she had to incur him to go on when the state mississippi argued that he was unstable mentally unstable because what kind of black person would want to challenge the state that really what the what was embedded behind that claim what they were using his records from the armed forces to to to make that claim they argued that she had he unlawfully voted which was not true but at the full weight of the state mississippi was brought to bear James Meredith and one of the things that we did was she actually invited him to her apartment in new york city to talk about what he was going through, you know, a context where could taste freedom instead of being left in mississippi, where he had to be in fight mode all the time. And so she was she made the difference for him she helped him manage his emotions even as she was managing her own emotions. They both were up against quite lot in mississippi disrespects. It the state just being ideologically opposed to desegregation making claims in the court that ridiculous but nevertheless had to be litigated did and so meredith is just one of the many plaintiffs that motley worked with whom she had to support and. She she almost was like, one could think of it as a kind therapy or. Some of it might be characterized as maternal. She did that because she had to, because these were hard cases, hard for the plaintiffs, hard the communities, black communities. And, of course difficult for mottley other civil rights lawyers as well. So justice catanese, brown, jackson acknowledge the influence of those who inspired her, stating i stand on the shoulders of so who have come before me in her Senate Confirmation hearing, including judge Constance Baker, motley during her time as a district judge. Constance baker motley, presi cited over cases ranging from the rights of persons in solitary confinement under the eighth amendment to a case that turned on whether a female reporter interview Baseball Players the locker room which was the location where male reporters typically got the inside scoop. Did Constance Baker motley a case that she presided over that she was particularly proud of and felt it defined legacy on the bench . Mm hmm. Thats a good question and a complicated question. And thats because the cases that tended to define her legacy were civil rights cases. And yet it was her background as a civil rights lawyer that had been weaponized against her to deny her, say, the appointment to the court of appeals. And so there was a legacy associated with her. Her expert in civil rights. Nevertheless, the cases that i would cite as being particularly meaningful to her and indeed to us relate to discrimination because essentially what she did was as a lawyer she paved the way for the passage of the civil rights of 1964. And that a judge she implemented the Civil Rights Act through cases that were brought. And let me tell you about two of them. The first defining case was blake versus sullivan and cromwell. This was a claim brought by female School Graduates against the law firm sullivan. Cromwell. I am sure we all know of of the white shoe firms. And in new york city arguing that firm would not hire women. Would not if they did, a handful would promote them or give them the kind of assignments that, would allow them to show their mettle and stand for partner is what the title seven case and a judge motley drew the case by random back a long time ago. The court in the Southern District actually had a wheel and. The clerk would spin the wheel and and get a name, reach out and get a name of one of the judges. And motley was it the law firms attorney was not happy as he argued that she had been a civil rights lawyer. She was a woman and she was biased, he argued. He wrote her a letter this. Then he filed a motion for recusal and motley rejected of the motion. And she did so in the opinion that to have resonance and continues to be cited by judges who asked to recuse on the basis of identity. What held there was that the identity alone was not enough and did not amount necessarily to bias. In fact, she turned the argument on head and said that if or gender or practice alone were to disqualify a judge, then no judge on the court could hear the case. Right . Because men corporate, for instance, have a practice background and a gender and a race. It was a brilliant opinion and has been cited time and time again. Now what was the sole substantive result there . The firm settled ultimately and motley approved a settlement that opened the doors of these lucrative positions in law firms to women. And i should say that sullivan and cromwell was hardly alone in its practices. The case really could have been brought any of the firms at that