 Hello everyone, I'm Maria Goldberg. I'm a senior editor at Pantheon Books and I'm so pleased to be here today and to be introducing Tamiko Brown-Nagin. She is Dean of the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, the Daniel P.S. Paul Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School and a member of the History Department there too. Today we are here to be to discuss her latest book. It's called Civil Rights Queen, Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality. It explores the life and times of Constance Baker Motley. And without further ado, here is Tamiko. Thank you for that introduction, Maria, and for serving as my interlocutor today. I'm excited to be here and thanks to the National Archives for hosting me today. I am going to begin this discussion with a reading from my book about Constance Baker Motley's most famous case and that was the battle to desegregate the University of Mississippi Ole Miss. This man has got to be crazy. Thurgood Marshall yelled to Motley in January of 1961. That's your case. Marshall had descended upon Motley's office waving a letter from James Meredith. The missive contains such a preposterous idea that Marshall thought the writer must be out of his mind. I am submitting an application for admission to the University of Mississippi, Meredith wrote. And I am anticipating encountering difficulty with the various agencies here in the state. In view of the growing trouble, Meredith requested Marshall's legal assistance. After Marshall finished laughing about Meredith's proposal to sue Ole Miss, he washed his hands of the gaze. Marshall knew that Motley had the smarts and the courtroom skills to do the job. And he thought her gender would be an advantage. The fight to desegregate Ole Miss might get someone killed. But in the context of Mississippi's white supremacist, yet chivalrous culture, as Marshall saw it, a black woman would fare better than a black man. Any white supremacist he opined would scarcely think twice about murdering a black man that might hesitate to lynch a black woman. The very idea of a black woman lawyer violently clashed with the worldview of Dugas Chan's Esquire, the white male lawyer who defended Ole Miss. Chan's refused to address the ink fund lawyer in the customary manner as Mrs. Motley. Instead, he used only indirect references, calling Motley her or she. At one point early on, Motley jumped to her feet in a bid to put an end to the charade. But the tipping point occurred when Chan's called her a constant. Motley immediately objected. I would like for Mr. Chan's not to call me by my first name, Motley insisted. Henceforth, the lawyer referred to Motley as the New York Council. After months of struggle and endless delays, Meredith had had enough. Browled beaten by the white resistance, Meredith wrote to Motley, again, resigned. I will not attempt to obtain an undergraduate degree from the University of Mississippi, the letter proclaimed, keenly aware that Motley, who had poured herself into the case, would be disappointed in his decision. Meredith pleaded for understanding. I am human after all, he wrote. Meredith had grown tired of waiting for deliverance that never came. Life had passed and by. His peers had graduated from college, begun careers and moved on with their lives. In the meantime, he and his family had endured a high cost, literally and figuratively, fighting to integrate the University of Mississippi. Motley was stunned by this message. In order to salvage her case and support her client, she morphed from lawyer to therapist, a role she often played in high stakes civil rights cases. To get a handle on the fraught situation, the pair would talk in Motley's New York City apartment where Meredith could taste freedom. There, Motley cajoled Meredith. She persuaded him that he had gone too far and that too much had been invested in the case by the Inc. Fund and the Federal Court of Appeals to abandon the litigation. Justice Meredith reached his breaking point, support arrived precisely as Motley had promised. On September 10th, 1962, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black intervened, halting any further action preventing James Meredith's matriculation to old myths. While in Mississippi, Motley built community with a small band of lawyers and activists who took part in LDF's effort to end Jim Crow in the state. She leaned on Megger Evers, the NAACP's most prominent operative in Mississippi, who often invited Motley to his home where she enjoyed home-cooked meals and fellowship with Evers, his wife, and their children. But only one month after Motley left Mississippi for the last time, Megger Evers was assassinated. It devastated her. Motley couldn't get out of her bed for weeks following his death. She couldn't even bring herself to attend his funeral. Nevertheless, she had left the state victorious. Constance Baker Motley emerged as one of the most respected lawyers in America. A story in the New York Times titled, Integration to Advocate, captured the professional heights to which Motley has soared. A tall, striking woman with piercing dark eyes is almost always in the courtroom in the eye of the hurricane surrounding the struggle for civil rights in the South, it wrote. Motley's fight to desegregate Ole Miss brought her public esteem and professional success along with devastating loss and profound pain. Thank you. Thank you, Tamiko. That is such a moving part of the book. It is one of my favorite passages, and it's so wonderful to hear you read it now. I am so excited to be in conversation with you today about this book, which I've been describing as a towering achievement, about a towering figure. It's really an inspiring story about an extraordinary woman, and it's also such a thorough and rigorous work of biography and of history. So I wanted to begin with the woman herself with Constance Baker Motley. As you say, she was one of the greatest civil rights lawyers we've ever seen. She also became this incredible justice. She was a political figure. She was a woman who accomplished many, many firsts in her time. And I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about where she came from, because this path for her was not predetermined, right? Absolutely not. It was most unexpected that Constance Baker Motley would grow up to be the civil rights queen. After all, she started life in a working class immigrant household in New Haven, Connecticut, where she grew up in the shadow of Yale University. Her father and virtually all of her male relatives worked at Yale in positions like Chef or in some capacity where they were in service to the wealthy young men who attended Yale University. The immigrant experience of her parents who had come to the country in the first decades of the 20th century from Nevis in the West Indies were vitally important to Baker and shaped her culturally, socially, and politically. Her parents were socially conservative. The mother was religious. The father read his privilege, read the privilege, excuse me, of the young men he mingled with at Yale into himself, he thought of himself and all West Indians as superior to African-Americans. Didn't even let his children play with migrants from the South, black migrants from the South. And yet, as I explained in the book, I think that the sense of superiority actually was a kind of protective armor for Baker once she started on her journey, which was often dangerous as the Mississippi case suggests as a civil rights lawyer in the South in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. Yeah, and actually, I mean, her path even into law is not straightforward for all the reasons that you just mentioned. Can you talk a little bit about what it was, how she even entered law school, how she found a job. This was not easy to do for someone of her position. Not at all. She is pathbreaking, first of all, because she aspires to attend college and not only college, but law school. She is highly intelligent, precocious, and she does come into contact with George Crawford, who is a black lawyer collaborator with the NAACP who tells her about the NAACP's litigation against segregation. She is aware of Jane Boland, who is a black woman who graduated from Yale University and became a judge on the Domestic Relations Court in New York. And so she develops this idea that she wants to contribute to the world through law. And she is a highly politically conscious person, even as a teenager growing up in the Great Depression, which is a circumstance that would yield political consciousness in the right person. And so how does she actually get into college? Her parents don't have money to send her to college or to law school, and it's through the generosity of a benefactor, Clarence Blakesley, who is a wealthy New Haven contractor that she finds her way first to FIST, then to NYU, and ultimately to Columbia Law School. Blakesley had overheard Motley speak at the Q-House, which was a civic organization for blacks in New Haven. He was so impressed with her, invited her to his office, and offered to subsidize her educational career. And Motley says later on that it's like a fairy tale. She had an angel watching over her in the form of Clarence Blakesley. And so that is the story of how she was able to afford to go to college and then law school. And in doing so, she defied convention for working class black people, for African Americans generally, for young women. She was quite a trailblazer, quite precocious and determined, even as a very young woman. Yeah, and there's a line in your book that really contextualizes this really beautifully where you write that her family's expectation of her was that she would become, she would get a good job as a hairdresser or something like that, right? But then after law school, she does what every graduating law student does and she begins to apply to law jobs. And she's turned away, all these firms with white male lawyers, they don't give her the time of day and it's Thurgood Marshall ultimately who gives her the chance. And that meeting you described in your book changes her life, right? Right, she is forever grateful to Thurgood Marshall for making her career and giving her a chance when other white male lawyers who are working in New York City law firms, the most prestigious and lucrative sector of the legal profession will not give her a chance. She writes about in her autobiography, essentially having the door closed in her face when she arrives at one New York City law firm. Marshall was the opposite. He welcomed her to the Ink Fund when she applied for a job there in 1945. This was even before she had graduated from Columbia Law School. She went to see Marshall on the recommendation of a classmate who was working there at the Ink Fund as an intern and Baker wanted to take this individual's place. And Marshall greeted her warmly, regaled her with stories about other black women professionals. These would have been school teachers who had been meaningful to him and invited her in and she eventually did become a member of the legal staff there. She was for most of her time at the Ink Fund. She was the only woman lawyer and she worked there for 20 years and just had a tremendous impact on the law through the variety of cases that she litigated. Yeah, and as the passage that you read illustrates so perfectly, the work that she was doing was really dangerous and really pathbreaking as you say. I mean, she traveled to all these places throughout the segregated South and for our younger audience, I mean, this wasn't that long ago. I mean, she was putting her life on the line being there on the one hand, she was there and she was celebrated. People you write would pour in to watch her stand there and stand up to these white Southern justices but at the same time, she was putting her life on the line. Can you describe what the environment there was like? Sure, a good example, Maria, would be from her very first case and trial and trial court and this occurred in Jackson, Mississippi where she and her colleague, Robert Carter, were litigating a case on behalf of black school teachers who were challenging a pay disparity. They, no matter how qualified they were, these teachers were always paid less than whites and Motley challenged his practice and when she arrived in Jackson, was just astounded by the sense that time had stood still since the Civil War practically and this was manifested in how she couldn't stay in hotels, she could barely find white-owned hotels, she could barely even get enough food to eat, she writes about always losing weight when she went to places like Jackson and she and her colleague were in situations where they had to contend with the racist attitudes and behaviors of whites, for instance, she and Bob Carter once attempted to buy fruit at a store and were badly mistreated by the proprietor and Motley was particularly protective of Carter who had served in the Army and who was a grown man who was being mistreated by the store owner who just did not recognize him as an equal and Motley wanted to fight back, but she did not, her fighting back had to occur in the courtroom but even there, Maria, the white supremacy was quite present in the way in which the black lawyers were treated by counsel in the display of black inferiority by their local co-counsel, Jess Brown, who was a black man who, when he was in the courtroom, never turned his back to the judge and went, walk bent over, just as I said, just displaying what was expected of him which was to be less than and there are many examples that show that Motley was, she was a brave person, that she had to be brave in order to do this work and she was litigating for her clients, but also on behalf of herself, one has to appreciate when one considers the discrimination that she faced even as she was working as a civil rights lawyer. Yeah, it's incredible. And at the same time, she leaves this enormous legacy and then she's a huge part of desegregating the South in the James Meredith case that you spoke to earlier, but in other ways too. I mean, she represents Martin Luther King. Can you just give us a, I mean, I'm sure the list would be long but can you name off just some of her accomplishments as an attorney? Sure, well, first we need to cover Brown versus Board of Education where she wrote the original complaint in that case and thus as the cases were litigated through the Supreme Court, the real sense in which the lawyers were building on her intellectual and anti-work. Then after Brown versus Board of Education, this great triumph where the court unanimously held that racially segregated schools mandated by law were unconstitutional, she helped to desegregate a number of school systems in the South, Atlanta, Birmingham and also to desegregate higher education including she litigated a case challenging segregation at the University of Florida College of Law at the University of Georgia at the University of Alabama. She represented Dr. King and Birmingham in the apocal campaign of the civil rights movement where Bull Connor turned the dogs loose on young people who were protesting segregation, represented King and also some high school students and middle school students who were expelled from school as a result of their activism. And she represented a variety of civil rights protesters also criminal defendants. Her first argument in the US Supreme Court was her representing a criminal defendant and that was just the first she argued and won nine of 10 cases at the US Supreme Court. She really was just a phenomenal civil rights lawyer of tremendous impact, the counterpart of Thurgood Marshall. Yeah, and then I wanna talk about, so this really just marks the first act of her life which is amazing. But so when Thurgood Marshall receives the nod to become a Supreme Court justice, there's people start looking for the next person to head the legal defense fund at the NAACP and she's passed over. And you write about this time in her life I think so wonderfully because you describe what happens and you also bring the lens of a kind of gendered analysis and to the start. Can you describe what happened and how she felt what had happened too? Sure. So this is 1961 when Marshall is being appointed to the Court of Appeals, the second circuit and he's leaving his position as director council of the Inc. Fund and he's going to have a successor and Motley and a number of Bob Carter whom I mentioned from the Jackson Mississippi case and a number of black lawyers thought that the torch would be passed to one of them. And it was not Marshall instead and the NAACP chose Jack Greenberg who was another wonderful lawyer, Matthewing Funn, a white man and Motley was disappointed and she thought that not only race but gender was a factor in her having been passed over. She thought that Marshall was just, it would have been a bridge too far to appoint a woman to this high profile position. After all, there were not women heading similar organizations like the ACLU for instance and she was disappointed in her mentor. And yet she, as I said, always spoke highly of Marshall for having given her the chance initially they were always friends and friendly and yet that was a great disappointment to her being passed over and is illustrative of how gender shaped opportunities for her and how even though she was a counterpart of Marshall and right there in the arena with these other civil rights lawyers she was set apart by her gender including when she was pregnant and then had her child, her only child around the same time that Browner's support of education was being litigated because after she had litigated that pay disparity case in Mississippi she actually went into Thurgood Marshall's office and said that she was being paid less than she was worth. And so this incident it crystallizes the phenomenon of how gender shaped Motley's experience in life or professional experiences although ultimately she did achieve all of these first it was not an easy path for her. Right and for the next stage in her career she enters New York politics where she also breaks ground but I wanted to ask you about how she managed that. I mean, one of the aspects of the book that I was also really interested in was in how you describe how she shaped how she was received, how people saw her how she appeared in photographs and in the media because she was a huge figure at this point. Can you yet please tell us? So because she had been passed over for this position at the Inc. Fund she was more open when New York City and New York State Democrats came calling and invited her to stand for public office first to run for New York Senate which she eventually does and later she runs for Manhattan Borough President and she wins there too. And it is a fascinating departure from what she's been doing and speaks to how talented she was that she was able to be successful in politics as well. In terms of how she was received well, the politicians loved her after all she had name recognition which is so important in politics. And she was coming onto the scene in the context of African-Americans pursuing voting rights and opportunity. And so she was a terrific standard bearer for the Democratic Party. And yet there were those who were not so welcoming of her including some black political figures in Harlem who including Malcolm X and Adam Clayton Powell who thought that she should stay in her lane who did not consider her an authentic black person. So whatever one conjures when one conjures authentic black person Constance Baker Motley was not it. And a part of the reason that she was not it was because she had been litigating for integration and by the mid 1960s integration was already falling out of favor as the priority in the struggle for black freedom certainly for people like Malcolm X. And so she had to work to be accepted and in that she was helped by friends from the Civil Rights Movement who were in New York at the time. And so it is an interesting moment for her because it is not clear at all that she will be successful in politics but she does manage success even while being just under great scrutiny. And there was scrutiny of what she wore that was true throughout her career. How she presented, she was very interesting looking and striking in her appearance and people commented on that. It was mostly to her advantage. She was what they then would say was a handsome woman and people noticed and yet it's always a double edged sword when a woman is known in part for her parents and it was for her as well. Yeah, and there's so many amazing photographs in your book of her is just like looking impeccable and kind of domineering over the men around her in these photographs. That's right, it was important for her to look the part. She was always well dressed and took putting herself together very seriously, put a lot of time into it. And so the question that this raised for me, Maria was how much of this is necessary for her professional position and how much of it was to her liking? And I think of course that it's hard to pull that apart for women given the norms and pressures that accompany appearance for women. That's right, and all the expectations that were placed on her as I said, too. That period in her life is so interesting too to me. I wanna talk to you about this idea that she is an agent of change, that for a lot of her career as an attorney and as a young person, she was doing really radical work. And then as you say, when she enters politics, there's all these other movements that have emerged that are more radical than she is. And you write about this so wonderfully because of course what a radical is changes over time. It's not a static thing. And I want you to describe this incredible moment where she goes on national TV to debate Malcolm X. And I love that passage because, although she is this amazing, amazing figure, your book is not a hagiography and you write about her as a complete full person. And there are moments when, you know, anyway, please tell us about this moment. Sure. Well, one of the reasons that I ultimately decided to write this book, Maria, is because of the longevity of her career, these three phases in which she achieved so much. And what it means to be a leader and how marginalized communities define freedom and equality changes over time such that, whereas Motley and Thurgood Marshall had been radicals called communists when they were working for civil rights, mitigating Brown and other cases in the 1950s and early 60s. By the mid 1960s and really even before, they were considered, their approach was considered passe. And the scene that you're describing from the book is when she goes on to national television to debate Malcolm X. And that's probably the first mistake because Malcolm X famously uses these debates to just hammer home his own points and to oftentimes just make this folks who are supposed to be debating him look kind of ridiculous. And that is essentially what happened. She in her very lawyerly reserved way tries to get him to concede through a series of questions that there's been change in America, racial change. And of course, the racial change comes through her activism. And he just will not concede the point and treats her as if she's no different from a racially backwards white male and makes the point that Motley's here saying that there's been change. And in the meantime, there are thousands of black men locked up in prison. And he goes to that example to really drive home the point that she's out of touch or her conception of the civil rights struggle is out of touch. And this was an experience that would have been bruising to her in part because she believes that she deserves deference and she understands that she has shaped history. And so it is a moment that is telling, revealing and does not show her at her best. Right. And then it's, you know, so not long after she enters politics she has noticed for a position on the federal bench. And it's interesting that she's criticized, you know for being, as you say, passe because while she's being considered for this position there are all these attacks on her for her former involvement in communist radical organizations that she has to endure before she receives her appointment. Can you describe what that nomination process was like for her? Sure. Well, it illustrates the point that how once politics are described whether one is considered middle of the road or radical really depends on the perspective of the individuals or groups who are making those descriptions. So within the context of the Black Power movement she is, she's a moderate at best. And yet when she is nominated for the judgeship there are those who claim that she's a radical. Senator James Eastlin holds up her nomination for seven months claiming that she was a communist and Motley has to endure a couple of different investigations by the FBI. She has to answer questions about what she was doing in New York when she was a teenager. Her associates then it's never proven that she was a car carrying communist. She was like many people when she was a young person that she was interested in and left as causes. She was a progressive. And yet all of this is weaponized against her. There are those who even consider her career as a civil rights lawyer as disqualifying. They claim that she won't be able to be fair and doesn't have the right experience to be a judge on the Southern District of New York where the judges hear many financial problems like cases, complex litigation coming out of Wall Street. And so she really has a time of it as she ends up being confirmed for the bench but not for the position that President Johnson originally wanted her to have, which was the seat on the court of appeals, Thurgood Marshall's seat that he was vacating to become solicitor general. She is appointed to the U.S. District Court. And so it's an historic first for her to achieve that and yet even in this great victory, one can see how she faces limitations because of who she is. Yeah. And I wanna talk about her time on the, when she occupies that seat before we run out of time, can you talk about what her approach is like to her judgment? Sure. Well, when she was nominated to the bench, Maria, she receives notes and congratulations from many of her friends from the Civil Rights and Women's Rights Movement. People like Pauli Murray who Murray sent her a note saying, hooray for our side. Thinking that with Motley on the bench, that the justice has to, to the outcomes have to improve, that there's a better chance that these progressive groups will win. And that is true sometimes with Motley, particularly early in her career where she decides a number of important sex discrimination cases, but she mostly is a pragmatic judge. She calls it like she sees them. And sometimes that means that the civil rights and women's rights and other progressive causes prevail, but many times they do not, including because she is a district court judge and limited by the law that's been decided by the Court of Appeals and by the Supreme Court. And so there are those who think that her turn as a judge is somewhat disappointing. I think she was a terrific judge and I think the cases, the sex discrimination cases that she decided, for instance, were groundbreaking. And yet it all goes to show that these positions are important and should be open to all and certainly to African-Americans and women. And yet just having a member of one's group in one of these positions does not guarantee any particular outcome, including because Motley was always under scrutiny. People are always trying to figure out if she's favoring the civil rights side. And so it's a complicated journey for her on the bench. Right, and even though she takes a lot of care to read the law to the letter and to not give any preferential treatment, she still, like you said, she makes these really groundbreaking rulings. I don't know how much time we have, but can you describe one of them for us? You're a pick. You've been so many. Sure, I will describe her ruling on behalf of Martin Sostre, who was a black man, Puerto Rican, in New York, jailhouse lawyer and an early advocate of prisoners' rights, who files a case arguing that his confinement to solitary confinement at Attica and Greenhaven Prisons constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. And he sues for damages and he prevails in Motley's courtroom. She agrees that solitary confinement is simply cruel, that he had been placed there for retaliation and because he was a black Muslim, because he advocated rights for prisoners, because the guards were racist and it is just a phenomenal case. And the most progressive case of her career, the most controversial case of her career, and one of those that really shows her courage, she did not have to decide that case in that way. Had she not, no one would have held it against her. Even progressives. After all, this is really carving a path that is still a point of contention, that is the notion of prisoners' rights, the notion of just the appreciation of mass incarceration that people can end up in prison when they really should not be there, either because they haven't done what they are accused of doing or because the sentences are so harsh. And so that's the one case, if I only have time to describe one case that I would put before you. Yeah, and I just wanna pause and say to our audience that as we're nearing the end of our programming, please don't hesitate to enter any questions that you might have into the chat and we will try to get to as many of them as we can. I also, I wanna return to something that you raise at the very opening of your book, which is this question posed by James Baldwin, which is, what is the price of the ticket you ask? And in some ways, this question drives the book and drives how you tell the story. And having spent years researching Motley, years writing this book, can you tell us what the cost was, do you think, for her? She's, she enacted change from outside of the system. She worked to enact change from within the system also. And so what is that toll that is taken when people who are outsiders who are first, what happens when they achieve power, do you think? Well, I describe how although there are many people and whole groups who expects particular outcomes from these kinds of appointments, in fact, there are tremendous constraints. There are their personal costs to being a first and Motley surely endured them, including because there were lawyers who never accepted her authority as a judge. They filed recusal motions seeking to remove her from cases, particularly if they involved issues of discrimination or criminal law, sometimes were disrespectful of her. Then there's the personal toll on her of having to perform all the time. And so the price of the ticket is that the system envelops these people. They're not able to, in Motley's case, she becomes a part of the state itself. And so she's just quite traditional. She's pragmatic as I mentioned. And so the idea is that it's just a high cost of being a first, of being a representative of one's race or of one's sex. And it's important to keep this in mind even as we celebrate these icons of equality and of change. And in this moment, Tamiko, we're so, you know, the courts are back in the news in a way that we haven't seen in a long time. On the one hand, we finally have a black woman who was taking a seat on the Supreme Court. On the other hand, you know, there's a possible ruling coming that might take back a lot of legal work that was done for women's rights. What do you think Constance Baker Motley would have to say about all this? Or, well, one of the points that I made during my commentary about Judge Jackson, future Justice Jackson's nomination and confirmation, hearings was just about how much continuity there was in her experience and the experience of Judge Motley who of course proceeded her by 50, 60 years. And so that was a disappointing reality. And I mean, things like how there was an effort to weaponize Motley's practice background against her and the same was true of Judge Jackson. Nevertheless, unlike Motley, Judge Jackson was able to achieve this historic first appointment to the US Supreme Court. And of course, Motley would be very pleased about that. She always advocated the appointment of more women and people of color to the bench because she thought that it strengthened democracy to have a diversity of people on the bench. She served on the bench for so long herself that she would have been well aware of the ways in which new personnel can undermine gains of the past. She saw that during the Reagan era, for instance. And so she would be unhappy, I think, with some of these developments, to the extent that rights that she helped to fight for are at risk, for instance, access to higher education and the road decision in so far as the underlying principle is about women's autonomy. I think she would be disappointed in the way things are going. And yet she also was a person who just could not, she was a person of great resilience and strength. And so she would say to those who are disappointed, step up. There are many ways to lead and to contribute as she showed through her life in as a practicing lawyer and politics and on the bench. And so there are many ways to seek change if one is dissatisfied with current developments. Yeah, that's good to remember, I think. And in fact, at the end of your book, you spend some time writing about her legacy and it's so moving to me because despite her prominent position, she always takes a lot of time and care to mentor others, which you alluded to earlier. But can you describe what that looked like because it was a significant part of the work that she did later on in her life? It was, she mentored a generation of lawyers who served as her law clerks. Of course, these are elite important positions that set lawyers up for careers in law firms and as law professors and as judges. And she was very pleased to mentor this new generation. And I think it's wonderful that she took that position. Of course, having experienced exclusion herself, the discrimination herself, one could imagine that she would take a different posture that she would not try so hard to give to younger people what she had been deprived of herself. That is exactly what she did. And as an example, she was very welcoming to then judge Sotomayor who joined the Southern District as Motley was taking senior status. And there are a number of other people whom she mentored, including her niece, Constance Royster, who became a lawyer. And it was important to Motley to remember her roots in New Haven in the West Indies. She always, annually, she visited the Nevis and enjoy just being among people who were culturally familiar and who remembered her parents. And so one of the points that I certainly seek to make in the book is that, yes, she was this important person, but she was a great person too. She was a gracious person. And I think that's important to know. Yes, wow. And since we're speaking at the National Archives today, I wanted to ask you too about your work researching this book. I know we first talked about this book now years ago. And even before you first mentioned it to me, you had been working on her life for years, even before then. So there is just this vast wealth of material and that has gone into this project. So can you describe what your research process was like and what it's like getting to know someone, a historical figure so intimately through that process? Sure. Well, Maria, I conducted a great deal of research for this book for many years, including at the National Archives, which has invaluable resources, including about the cases that the NAACP litigated some of them. And Library of Congress was important to my research. Archival papers, personal papers at New York University at Columbia Law School. And then, of course, the papers of individuals with whom she interacted like Pauline Murray, organizations like the National Women's Political Caucus, whose papers I found at the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe. So there were a lot of sources, a lot of ground to cover. And it was really important to me to make sure that as a writer of a biography that seeks to cover the life and times of this important figure and important movements, that I did do my very best to paint a full picture of her. And that wasn't easy because she was reserved. She didn't leave a lot behind in terms of personal reflections. And so I made it a point to interview people who knew her inside or family and outside to really get to know the places that were important to her, New Haven, of course, but also Nevis, to which I traveled a couple of times. And the secondary literature was important too, but a lot of original research went into this book. Yeah. And in fact, you came across her first when you were writing your previous book, which was about a number of figures in the civil rights movement. And just from my last question, I mean, if there's any thoughts you want to leave us with, please, please say them. But I wanted to ask you why her? There have been so many people who have been overlooked from that time, right? And I feel like finally we're in a moment where people are giving them the recognition and the credit and the scholarship that they're due. But what was it about her that compelled you to take on this work that you ended up taking on? Right. Well, I really did think, Maria, that given her tremendous impact on the law and in politics, that it was a kind of historical malpractice to not know about her, to not have a commanding biography of this figure, this towering figure. And I wanted to correct the historical record. And I also wanted to write this book because I do think that one reason that she's been overlooked is because she was a woman and a black woman. So it comes down to gender and race, shaping what history is, who are considered figures worth remembering. And I wanted to write about her as well because she's an inspiring figure and has inspired so many individuals who have themselves gone on to great careers, including the vice president, Kamala Harris, my late colleague, Lonnie Guinear, who talked to me about how moved she was in seeing Constance Baker Motley on the television screen, escorting James Meredith to and from the courthouse in that case that I opened up with. And so she deserves to be remembered and studied, and especially so by all of those whom she visibly represented, but truly by every American. It's important to appreciate how the country was reshaped during the Civil Rights and Women's Rights Movement. There's few people better than Constance Baker Motley to give us a window onto that change. That's right. Well, thank you so much, Tamiko, for this wonderful lunchtime conversation. Thank you to the National Archives also for hosting us and all of the members of our audience today. I'm gonna hold this book up for you all. I hope you all find a copy wherever books are sold and pick it up and read about Constance Baker Motley and her incredible story for yourselves. Thank you. Thank you, Maria. And thank you to the National Archives. I've thoroughly enjoyed this conversation.