All Rise, The Judge Is In Town - Constance Baker Motley in Chester
By Marta Daniels
The Honorable Constance Baker Motley, Chief Judge of the Federal Court, Southern District of New York, in Chambers, 1982
For forty years Chester provided a home-away-from-home for a legendary woman whose courage, integrity and distinguished legal career shaped American history in civil rights, women’s rights and American jurisprudence.
Between 1965 and 2005, Judge Constance Baker Motley (1921-2005) maintained a seasonal residence in Chester, spending weekends, holidays and summers in her 1745 colonial on Cedar Lake Road when she traveled from NY City, where her job as a federal judge in the Southern District of New York, was located. She cherished the quiet and peace of rural Chester, where she entertained family and friends, along with courtroom colleagues, using her beloved home in Chester to rest and recharge her spirit.
Ca. 1745 Francis Bushnell Home, 99 Cedar Lake Road, Chester, CT. Owned by Constance and Joel Motley, 1965-2005. CHS Photo 1984
While in Chester, Judge Motley received the Presidential Citizen’s Medal, was inducted into the National and Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame, and had her legal work praised by U.S. Supreme Court Justices, three Presidents and judges in the Federal Courts. The road to such acclaim was long and dangerous, but made bearable by the loving support of her husband, Joel W. Motley Jr., and her son, Joel III, who both supported her in every way.
First 20 Years with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund
Before arriving in Chester in 1965, Motley spent 20 tumultuous years as an NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) attorney, who was hired by, and worked beside, Thurgood Marshall. She became the primary legal figure in the integration of southern public schools across 11 southern states after the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision, Brown vs Board of Education, which ruled “separate but equal schools” unconstitutional.
Not only did she write the first legal brief in Brown, she was the “face in the southern courtroom,” litigating major challenges, and eventually winning them all—from the 1957 Arkansas “Little Rock Nine” Central High School integration case, to James Meredith’s famous admission to the all-white University of Mississippi in September 1962.
James Meredith and NAACP LDF Attorney Motley being picketed at the Federal Courthouse in New Orleans where they were appealing Meredith’s latest admissions denial in his historic desegregation case at the University of Mississippi. Medgar Evers, famous NAACP civil rights leader, is behind Meredith, left. 1962
While litigating her school cases, Mrs. Motley also provided active legal counsel in major civil rights cases of the 1950s and early 1960s in the Deep South, including the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Freedom Riders, the Lunch Counter Sit-Ins and the Desegregation Campaigns of Martin Luther King in major cities like Albany, GA and Birmingham, AL.
An attorney for King after 1962, Motley served as counsel in many of his southern court cases, was often there for him when he was jailed, and helped him desegregate public facilities, libraries, golf courses, public transportation and restaurants in the South—he in the streets, she in the courts. Her NAACP LDF civil rights work also took her to the U.S. Supreme Court ten times, where, as the first African American woman to argue before the highest Court, she won all ten of her cases.
Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King and Constance Baker Motley at the SCLC Convention honoring Rosa Parks, Birmingham, AL, August 1965. Motley was giving the keynote presentation on Rosa Parks. Photo Credit: AP
Though in constant physical danger, she persisted in the South. It was the 1963 fire-bombing deaths of four little black girls in a Birmingham church, and the Klan assassination of her close friend and civil rights leader, Medgar Evers, in Jackson, Mississippi—and in whose home her own 11-year-old son Joel had stayed—that caused her to end her Southern NAACP Legal Defense Fund work.
A Second Career and a House in Chester, CT
By 1965, Mrs. Motley stopped traveling to the South, bought her “weekend” house in Chester, and embarked on a new (though short-lived) career as a New York politician. She became New York’s first black woman State Senator (1964-65), then was elected the first black woman President of the Manhattan Borough Council (1965-66), overseeing the welfare of two million New Yorkers, and Harlem’s economic revitalization. By 1966, President Johnson nominated her to the federal bench in the Southern District of New York, and when confirmed, she became the first black woman ever to hold that position. By 1982 she became its Chief Judge, also a first.
January 25, 1966, President Lyndon Johnson and Constance Baker Motley in the Oval Office, upon her nomination to the Federal Bench in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Upon confirmation, in September, 1966, she became the first African American woman to hold the position of federal judge.
In her 39 years as a federal judge (1966-2005), Motley’s decisions increased equal access rights for women, improved humane treatment of prisoners, assisted the rights of workers, achieved justice for litigants in unfair trade practices, and gained women's equality in employment and pay equity. With her landmark 1978 World Series ruling that female reporters must be admitted to major league sports locker rooms, she earned a lasting moniker—“The Baseball Judge.”
Life in Chester
Side View, Motley Home, Cedar Lake Rd, Chester, 1984
Her judicial years coincided with her time in Chester (1966-2005), where she resided seasonally in her beloved home, the 1745 “Bushnell House,” which she purchased in 1965, inspired by her deep love of history. She was a founding Trustee of the Chester Historical Society in 1970, and spent seven years’ worth of her July vacations researching the history of her own historic home—this 1745 colonial, the “Bushnell House”—one of the oldest in Middlesex County. Her detailed paper on it was presented to the Society in 1978.
Her life in Chester was quiet, private and devoted to family; it also allowed her to enjoy town events without the glare of public scrutiny. During her judicial years, Judge Motley and her husband, Joel Motley Jr., spent nearly every weekend at their Chester home—gardening, entertaining or improving their property. Often, they invited family, friends and neighbors to help on improvement efforts, usually followed by a barbecue that she and Joel prepared.
Constance Baker Motley and husband Joel seated far right on log, clearing a fallen tree from their Chester land off Cedar Lake Rd. Helping at left (standing) is Tom Stieger, Dan Agnelli, and David Green, husband of Constance Motley’s sister Marion Baker Green (seated left), beside Pat Stieger (Tom's wife) and an unidentified woman
The Motleys spent weekends, holidays and vacations in Chester, resting and hosting family and friends. Here Joel and Constance (center) spend time with visitors, summer 1969.
Constance and Joel Motley Jr. holding a fish caught in the Pattaconk Brook behind the Motley property off Cedar Lake Road, 1968.
One of Joel Motley’s favorite activities enjoyed in Chester was fishing in the brook behind their home and cooking what was caught. The Motleys’ Connecticut home also put them closer to Constance Motley’s large family. (She was born in New Haven, and had 8 siblings who lived nearby.) The spacious home allowed her extended family to spend many holidays together in Chester. In addition, the Judge was also fond of adjourning her New York courtroom staff to her “Chester Chambers” for legal discussions and holding “moot court” on weekends. “These were special occasions for us,” recalled Daniel Steinbock, her law clerk who accompanied Judge Motley to Chester in the 1970s; he is now retired Dean of the University of Toledo College of Law.
Chesterites can still remember Motley’s dinner parties, for which she liked to cook. She would invite court clerks (she had 80 in her 39 years on the federal bench) and famous civil rights activists (like Henry Lewis Gates), along with local friends and neighbors. “Integrity was her middle name,” recalled Barbara Delaney a co-founder of the Chester Historical Society and Motley’s close friend for 40 years. “We always enjoyed our dinners with the Motleys”, she said. Judge Motley was a life member of the Chester Historical Society, as is her son Joel Motley III.
50th Wedding Anniversary Celebration in Chester
August 18, 1996
Constance Baker Motley spent nearly 15 years litigating cases in the white-hot racial cauldron of the Deep South, two more navigating the choppy headwaters of New York’s political leadership, and 39 years adjudicating complicated cases of federal jurisprudence. Her life was one of skilled and disciplined hard work, mediated by courage, integrity, persistence and wisdom. In her later years, she found a restful haven in the town of Chester, surrounded by supportive neighbors and a loving family.
To learn more about her remarkable and inspiring work and legacy, visit the Society’s resource page on Judge Motley for books, films and programs, and to learn more about the lasting memorials the town undertook after her death in 2005.
Marta Daniels is the Curator of the Constance Baker Motley Special Collections Archive of the Chester Historical Society, and a writer, public historian and speaker, available to community groups and schools on the subject of Judge Motley and Civil Rights history.