When she was 15, Constance Baker Motley was turned away from a public beach because she was black. It was only then -- even though her mother was active in the NAACP -- that the teenager really became interested in civil rights.
She went to law school and found herself fighting racism in landmark segregation cases including Brown v. Board of Education, the Central High School case in Arkansas and the case that let James Meredith enroll at the University of Mississippi.
Motley also broke barriers herself: She was the first black woman appointed to the federal bench, as well the first one elected to the New York state Senate.
Motley, who would have celebrated her 40th anniversary on the bench next year, died Wednesday of congestive heart failure at NYU Downtown Hospital, said her son, Joel Motley III. She was 84.
"She is a person of a kind and stature the likes of which they're not making anymore," said Chief Judge Michael Mukasey in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, where Motley served.
[...] In the late 1950s, Motley took an interest in politics and by 1964 had left the NAACP to become the first black woman to serve in the New York Senate.
In 1965, she became the first woman president of the borough of Manhattan, where she worked to promote integration in public schools.
The following year, President Johnson nominated her to the federal bench in Manhattan. She was confirmed nine months later, though her appointment was opposed by conservative federal judges and Southern politicians.
Over the next four decades, Motley handled a number of civil rights cases, including her decision in 1978 allowing a female reporter to be admitted to the New York Yankees' locker room.
