Often overlooked, civil rights advocate Constance Baker Motley gets her due [npr.org]

By Tonya Mosley, Photo: Wikipedia, National Public Radio, February 16, 2022

In Civil Rights Queen, author Tomiko Brown-Nagin profiles Motley, a Black woman who wrote the original complaint in Brown v. The Board of Education and was on Martin Luther King's legal team.

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Today, we're going to hear about a woman whose biographer says belongs in the pantheon of great American leaders. And the lack of attention she's received is a form of historical malpractice. That woman is civil rights lawyer Constance Baker Motley. Her biographer, Tomiko Brown-Nagin, spoke with our guest interviewer, Tonya Mosley. Tonya is a special contributor to NPR's Here & Now and host of the podcast Truth Be Told. Tomiko Brown-Nagin is a professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School and dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. Her new book is called "Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley And The Struggle For Equality."

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