Mothers aren't always right, case in point, Constance Baker's mother wanted her to be a hair dresser. Instead, Constance Baker Motley went on law school and became the first black woman appointed to the federal bench and the first black woman elected to the New York State Senate. Motley died last week of congestive heart failure in New York City at the age of 84. She was one hell of a woman. Thank God, she defied her mother and followed her heart and spent 20 years with the NAACP's Legal and Educational Defense Fund serving as a law clerk to the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, who was then the NAACP's chief counsel.

In 1950, Motley helped prepare the draft complaint for what would become Brown v. Board of Education. The ground breaking bit of legislation that integrated our public schools. Motley played a pivotal role in a number of historical cases including the 1957 case in Little Rock, Arkansas that prompted President Eisenhower to call in federal troops to protect nine black students at Central High School and in the early 1960's she personally argued for the enrollment of two black students at the University of Georgia. She represented the "Freedom Riders" who rode buses to test the Supreme Court's 1960 ruling prohibiting segregation in interstate transportation. Motley also served as Martin Luther King Jr.'s personal attorney defending his right to march in Birmingham, Alabama and Albany, Georgia. If she was scared or intimidated during these dangerous times when black people were being lynched, burned out of their homes and crosses were being burned on their lawns she certainly didn't show it. In her autobiography, "Equal Justice under Law," Motley said defeat never entered her mind. "We all believed that our time had come and that we had to go forward." Perhaps she was inspired by the courage of Dr. King. Recalling a 1963 visit to The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in jail, she remarked, "It was then I realized that we did indeed have a new civil rights leader a man willing to die for our freedom."

I find the courage and commitment of Mrs. Motley and Dr. King unbelievably awe inspiring and unequaled. I can't think of anyone today who demonstrates this level of commitment and dedication to the cause of civil rights or who has made the kinds of sacrifices these two people so willingly made for their people. I wanted to take a moment to pay tribute to Mrs. Motley and her trail blazing days of glory not only for civil rights but for women. She believed it was her time and she pushed through barriers of race and gender like they didn't even exist. What a woman. How I wish she could be our next nominee for the Supreme Court. Now that's a jurist worthy of serving a lifetime appointment on the highest court in the land.