Doctor Curmudgeon® Long Overdue…
By Diane Batshaw Eisman, M.D. FAAP Doctor Eisman, is in Family Practice in Aventura, Florida with her partner, Dr. Eugene Eisman, an internist/cardiologist
My hero!
Justice Constance Baker Motley was a brilliant jurist
She was superbly qualified:
As an attorney
As a legal tactician in the Civil Rights Movement.
As a Federal judge.
And yet she was disqualified from nomination to the United States Supreme Court:
Because she was a woman
Especially because she was a Black woman.
Justice Motley was born in 1921 in Connecticut, the child of parents who had emigrated from the West Indies.
She could not afford to attend college and so, on graduation from high school, she worked as a maid.
Even as a teenager, her intelligence, thoughtfulness and radiant capability shone. She had presented a speech at a community center. Clarence Blakerslee, a white, wealthy business man happened to be there. He was so impressed by this youngster that he paid for her to attend college. His financial support allowed her to graduate from NYU with a bachelor’s degree in economics.
It was in 1944 that she became the first Black woman to be allowed to enter Columbia School of Law. These were hard times for an eminently qualified woman who happened to have dark skin.
Eventually, Justice Motley became the first Black woman to argue a case before the United Sates Supreme Court. Between 1961 and 1965, she argued ten cases before the Supreme Court and won nine of them.
This woman was not merely brilliant, but courageous. In those years, it was more than difficult for able women to be recognized in certain fields, but for those who were Black, it was an excruciatingly uphill battle. Women of color struggled against much adversity to secure positions for which they were more than qualified.
In 1964, my hero, Justice Motely, was the first woman elected to the New York State Senate.
Recognizing her superb accomplishments, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed her to the United States District Court. And so in 1966, she became the very first African American woman to be a Federal Judge. A long time coming!
It was in the early 1960s that murmurs began to be heard supporting this eminent justice for a Supreme Court nomination. “An obvious choice,” proclaimed The National Women’s Political Caucus. Not so obvious to those defamers fueled by prejudice and discrimination.
Her professional credentials far transcended those of other attorneys and judicial nominees. But the other nominees were males who were white. So, this exemplary judge was never seriously considered.
Republican Senator Jacob Javits, in 1966, was a supporter of Justice Constance Baker Motley. He felt she was more than qualified to sit on the Supreme Court. “The greatest tribute,” he said, “was that she would have earned the position on the bases of her talent and training, irrespective of race or gender.”
Senator Javits stated that “Mrs. Motley’s reputation has always been excellent…She is a woman, with great humanitarian instinct, but I have never seen it to disturb her judgment objectively and on questions of law.”
Finally, we are witness to a long overdue milestone.
And so, as Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is sworn in to serve on the United States Supreme Court, I know that I will see a glowing shadow applauding her.
And it is indeed too long overdue
Justice Constance Baker Motely.
My hero!
Dr. Curmudgeon suggests “Bitter Medicine”, Dr. Eugene Eisman’s story of his experiences–from the humorous to the intense—as a young army doctor serving in the Vietnam War.
Bitter Medicine by Eugene H. Eisman, M.D. –on Amazon
Doctor Curmudgeon® is Diane Batshaw Eisman, M.D., a physician-satirist. This column originally appeared on SERMO, the leading global social network for doctors.
SERMO www.sermo.com “talk real world medicine”