Constance Baker Motley (1921-2005)
Filed under the name Constance · February 26, 2026
I was one of very few Black women in my doctoral cohort at Cornell, so I read about Constance Baker Motley with a particular, personal recognition — she was the first Black woman named to sit on a U.S. federal bench, after a career as a trailblazing civil rights lawyer, which meant proving her competence twice over in rooms designed to assume otherwise. I was passed over for department chair twice in circumstances I believe, though cannot prove, were about race and gender, and it remains a small, old bruise I do not often discuss. It is precisely why I have spent so much of my life mentoring young women and students of color in the sciences: doors, once opened, tend to stay open only if someone keeps propping them. Judge Motley's record speaks for itself with the kind of rigor I respect in any field, evidence over reputation, achievement over the noise around it. I find myself, in my seventies now, still measuring my own career against people like her, and still finding useful lessons there.