Constance Baker Motley

“The Constitution, as originally drawn, made no reference to the fact that all Americans wre considered equal members of society.”

“We Americans entered a new phase in our history - the era of integration - in 1954.”

“In high school, I won a prize for an essay on tuberculosis. When I got through writing the essay, I was sure I had the disease.”

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

“There is no longer a single common impediment to blacks emerging in this society.”

“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.”

“I remember being infuriated from the top of my head to the tip of my toes the first time a screen was put around Bob Carter and me on a train leaving Washington in the 1940s.”

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

“I rejected the notion that my race or sex would bar my success in life.”

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

“The black population now consists of two distinct classes-the middle class and the poor.”

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

“How long must the American community afford special treatment to blacks?”

“Today's white majority is largely silent about the race question.”

“By 1962, King had become, by the media's reckoning, the new civil rights leader.”

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

“When I was 15, I decided I wanted to be a lawyer. No one thought this was a good idea.”

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

“The fact is that racism, despite all the doomsayers, has diminished.”

“Whites would rather not be involved in race matters, I think.”