When she accepted her nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2021, Ketanji Brown Jackson gave recognition to a civil rights champion who was the tip of the spear for Black women in the federal judiciary—but who tends to be overshadowed by other towering figures in the movement.
Constance Baker Motley, who was born in 1921 in New Haven, Connecticut, to Caribbean immigrants, pulverized barriers to women and minorities in law and government when those institutions were all shuttered to anyone but white men.
