Constance Baker Motley

Federal Judge Constance Baker Motley was born in Connecticut in 1921. She later joined the Legal Defense and Educational Fund of the NAACP and worked with Thurgood Marshall. Motley won notable civil rights victories in the U.S. Supreme Court, represented Martin Luther King Jr., served in the New York State Senate and was a city borough president. Perhaps most notably, though, she became the first black woman to be appointed to a federal judgeship in 1966. She died in New York City in 2005.