Rutgers Law School hosted a special U.S. postal stamp dedication honoring a legal and civil rights pioneer. The Honorable Constance Baker Motley was the nation’s first Black female federal judge, appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson. She was also the first Black female state senator in New York and the first Black female Borough President of Manhattan.
The stamp dedication highlighted Judge Motley’s most prominent cases and her connections to Rutgers Law with guest speakers including her former law clerks Susan Davis `81 and Dorothy E. Roberts, who later became a professor at Rutgers Law School.
“Her brilliant, courageous, and tenacious lawyering was absolutely central to the civil rights litigation effort that toppled the Jim Crow regime in the United States,” Professor Roberts said. Professor Roberts is now the director of the Program on Race, Science and Society at the University of Pennsylvania.
Constance Royster `77 spoke fondly of her aunt and namesake in the keynote address. She also referenced the speech her aunt gave at her law school commencement at Rutgers-Newark in 1977.
“I can assure you that she was a woman before her time,” she said. “That speech reads as well today as it did then. She saw things that are happening today.”
The March 26 dedication was held at Ruth Bader Ginsburg Hall on the Rutgers-Newark campus. Della Moses Walker, the director of the New Jersey chapter of the Ebony Society of Philatelic Events and Reflections (ESPER), emceed the event. ESPER is a nonprofit organization that promotes stamp collecting that recognizes Black people and their achievements. ESPER also co-hosted last year’s Ruth Bader Ginsburg US postal stamp dedication.
Judge Motley’s legal career began when she started working for the NAACP while attending Columbia Law School in 1946. As the first African American woman to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Motley faced harsh criticism and racism which didn’t deter her. By 1965, she argued 10 Supreme Court cases and won nine of them. Twenty years later, the case she lost was overturned.
More than 100 students from Barringer, University and Central high schools also attended the dedication. Event co-sponsors include USPS, ESPER, NAACP, American Association of University Women of New Jersey, and Association of Black Women Lawyers of New Jersey.
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