Quotes from Constance Baker Motley

We knew then what we know now; only exemplary blacks are acceptable.

Sexism, like racism, goes with us into the next century. I see class warfare as overshadowing both.

We African Americans have now spent the major part of the 20th Century battling racism.

The women's rights movement of the 1970s had not yet emerged; except for Bella Abzug, I had no women supporters.

We Americans entered a new phase in our history - the era of integration - in 1954.

The black population now consists of two distinct classes-the middle class and the poor.

I never thought I would live long enough to see the legal profession change to the extent it has.

The fact is that racism, despite all the doomsayers, has diminished.

I grew up in a house where nobody had to tell me to go to school every day and do my homework.

There is no longer a single common impediment to blacks emerging in this society.

In my view, I did not get to the federal bench because I was a woman.

Whites would rather not be involved in race matters, I think.

Too many whites still see blacks as a group apart.

The middle class, in the white population, encompasses a wide swath.

Had it not been for James Meredith, who was willing to risk his life, the University of Mississippi would still be all white.

Affirmitive action is extremely complex because it appears in many different forms.

I was born and raised in the oldest settled part of the nation and in an environment in which racism was officially mooted.

When I was 15, I decided I wanted to be a lawyer. No one thought this was a good idea.

I remember being infuriated from the top of my head to the tip of my toes the first time a screen was put around Bob Carter and me on a train leaving Washington in the 1940s.

In high school, I won a prize for an essay on tuberculosis. When I got through writing the essay, I was sure I had the disease.

The Constitution, as originally drawn, made no reference to the fact that all Americans wre considered equal members of society.

Living at the YMCA in Harlem dramatically broadened my view of the world.

I rejected the notion that my race or sex would bar my success in life.

In high school, I discovered myself. I was interested in race relations and the legal profession. I read about Lincoln and that he believed the law to be the most difficult of professions.