Motley, a graduate of New York University and Columbia Law School, also argued the 1957 case in Little Rock, Ark., that led President Eisenhower to call in federal troops to protect nine Black students at Central High.
Also in the early 1960s, she successfully argued for 1,000 school children to be reinstated in Birmingham, Ala., after the local school board expelled them for demonstrating. She represented “Freedom Riders” who rode buses to test the Supreme Court’s 1960 ruling prohibiting segregation in interstate transportation. During this time, she represented the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as well, defending his right to march in Birmingham and Albany, Ga.
Motley and the Legal Defense and Education Fund, committed to a careful strategy of dismantling segregation through the courts, were amazed by the emergence of more militant tactics such as lunch-counter sit-ins, but she came to believe that litigation was not the only road to equality.
Recalling a 1963 visit to King in jail, she remarked, “It was then I realized that we did indeed have a new civil rights leader — a man willing to die for our freedom.”
Motley was born in New Haven, Conn., the ninth of 12 children. Her mother, Rachel Baker, was a founder of the New Haven chapter of the NAACP. Her father, Willoughby Alva Baker, worked as a chef for student organizations at Yale University.
It was the beach incident that solidified the course her life would take. Though her parents could not afford to send her to college, a local philanthropist, Clarence W. Blakeslee, offered to pay for her education after hearing her speak at a community meeting.
— Associated Press
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