Tomiko Brown-Nagin, dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Daniel P.S. Paul Professor of Constitutional Law, and Professor of History at Harvard University has recently published Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality (Penguin RandomHouse). On Monday, February 14 at 4:00 pm ET, she will present the book to the Washington History Seminar as part of a Zoom webinar, which is open to the public on a first-come, first-served basis. Register here.
We’re told that the space fills up very quickly, and if you are unable to connect you watch on the Facebook page of the National History Center or the website of the Wilson Center website. A recording will be posted on the National History Center's YouTube Channel. Commentators are Timothy Lovelace, John Hope Franklin Research Scholar and Professor of Law at Duke University, and Risa Goluboff, Arnold H. Leon Professor of Law, Professor of History, and Dean of the University of Virginia Law School.
From the Washington History Center’s announcement:
In her new book, Civil Rights Queen, Tomiko Brown-Nagin examines the life and work of pathbreaking lawyer, politician and judge, Constance Baker Motley. The counterpart to Thurgood Marshall—”Mr. Civil Rights”—Motley litigated hundreds of cases that remade American law and society, including Brown v. Board of Education. She also desegregated flagship public universities in Florida, Georgia, and Mississippi, and represented Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Birmingham Children’s Marchers—helping rescue the pivotal campaign that gave rise to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Then, as the first black woman federal judge, Motley decided landmark cases that, among other things, implemented the Civil Rights Act. Yet she is not nearly as well known today as her impact on public life would suggest. Brown-Nagin argues that Motley’s gender, and scholars’ tendency to divide the civil rights movement into discrete and antagonistic legal and direct-action wings, help explain why. Looking at the civil rights movement and the legal profession through a woman’s eyes, Brown-Nagin explores themes such as law versus politics as pathways to reform, diversity in the Black experience, identity and judging, and the “price of the ticket” when outsiders become insiders in the power structure.
--Dan Ernst
