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Vol. 8 No. 41…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…October 14, 2005
Constance Baker
Motley (1921-2005)
The ninth of twelve children born
to a family that migrated to the US from the Caribbean island of Nevis,
Constance Baker was born on September 14, 1921 in New Haven, Connecticut. Her father, Willoughby Alva Baker, was
a chef for Skull and Bones, a secretive student organization at Yale
University. Her mother, Rachel
Baker, was a founder of the New Haven NAACP. Active in the New Haven Youth
Council and the New Haven Adult Community Council, at age 15, Baker’s interest
in civil rights grew after she was turned away from a public beach because she
was black.
Ironically, a white
philanthropist, Clarence Blakeslee paid for Baker’s college education. She attended Fisk University before
transferring to New York University, where she earned a degree in economics
(1943). In her senior year
at Columbia University, Baker became a law clerk to Thurgood Marshall, chief
counsel of the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Educational Fund. In 1946, she
received her law degree and married Joel Wilson Motley.
Constance Baker Motley joined the
legal staff of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. As Associate Counsel, Motley worked on
some of the nation’s most famous civil rights cases, including Brown v.
Board of Education (1954) and all the major school segregation cases
supported by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. A key legal strategist in the civil rights movement, not
only helped to desegregate southern schools, recreational facilities, public
accommodations and transportation, she represented black plaintiffs in public
housing cases.
On October 16, 1961, Motley
argued Hamilton v. Alabama, which involved the right to counsel in a
capital case before the United States Supreme Court. In all, she argued ten cases before the Court, including Turner
v. City of Memphis (1962), which ended segregation in Dobbs Houses
Restaurant in the Memphis Municipal Airport Terminal, Meredith v. Fair (1962),
the successful effort on behalf of James Meredith to attend the University of
Mississippi, and Watson v. City of Memphis, TN (1963), which required
desegregation of the city’s recreational facilities. A successful advocate, Motley won nine of the ten cases she
argued before the Supreme Court.
Motley ran for and won a seat in
the New York State Senate to represent Manhattan’s upper west side and west
Harlem districts, becoming the first black woman to serve in that body. In
February 1965, Manhattan members of the New York City Council elected Motley to
fill a one-year vacancy in the office of President of the Borough of Manhattan;
she became the first woman to serve in that office. She was elected to a full four-year term in November 1965.
President Lyndon B. Johnson
nominated Motley to serve on the federal court in the Southern District of New
York. Though conservative federal judges and southern politicians opposed her
nomination, Constance Baker Motley became the first black woman appointed to
the federal judiciary (1966).
Motley made many important rulings as a federal judge. On July 1, 1982, she became Chief
Judge, the first woman to serve in that capacity for the Southern District of
New York, the largest federal trial bench in the country.
Author of countless articles and legal opinions, Motley served on the court with distinction. Inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame (1993), Motley served as jurist-in-residence at the Indiana University School of Law in 1997. Her autobiography - Equal Justice Under Law: The Life of a Pioneer for Black Civil Rights and Women's Rights (1998) - chronicles her fight against the "separate but equal" racial practices of the 1950s and 1960s. In 2001, President Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Citizens Medal. Constance Baker Motley died on September 28, 2005. (Sources: www.aaregistry.com, www.smith.edu and www.jtbf.org/five_firsts/Motley_C.htm)
Injustice of the Courts
By Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer (1907)
Whites alone upon the jury in a number of the states,
Thus they crush a helpless Negro with their prejudicial
hates;
Legal ills they thrust upon him, and the tale is passing
sad—
Equal rights with white men?
Never! Color-phobia makes them mad.
'Tis the training of the children, every Negro to suppress,
They their spleen may vent upon him and he happy, none the
less,
They will boast aloud in anger if by Negroes they are
crossed,
"If we shoot or kill a Negro, not a cent will be the
cost."
Juries represent the people and their sentiments make known,
When a Negro comes in question there's discrimination shown.
They are bold to make assertion that they will not do the
same
For a Negro as a white man, and no feeling comes of shame.
Jurymen have made confession after trial had been made
Of a Negro, and "He's guilty!" was the verdict
there displayed.
Stern remorse so touched the conscience, they the story did
relate,
How the verdict they had rendered was to stay the dying
fate.
"It was hard to say him guilty, for the man, we
thought, was clear.
But a mob was making clamors that were terrible to
hear."
"Punishment or death!" it shouted, and around
began to press;
And of two impending evils, we have chosen him the less.
Thus we legalized the lynchers, we their words to court have
brought,
And the innocent convicted! how revolting is the thought!
When a mob has forced a jury to a stand against the right,
All the waters of the ocean cannot make the conscience
white.
Once a Negro girl was saucy, and the wife the husband told,
Who in haste arraigned the servant and began to swear and
scold.
Then he whipped her without mercy— straightway she to law
applied.
Passing strange—they found him guilty, and the judge was
sorely tried.
This he said, in making sentence, "No disfavor comes to
you,
You have only done as others, or as I myself would do,
If your servants vex the mistress, thrash them out again, I
say,
Go to jail ten minutes only, and a fine of five cents
pay!"
If a judge is conscientious, then the people vote him out,
His partiality to white men they must know, beyond a doubt.
No equality for Negroes in the law the world must know,
If he fails to make distinctions, from the bench they'll
have him go.
This injustice is a cancer, in the nation's breast it lives,
Quietly and unmolested, awful is the death it gives.
It results from color-phobia, which the God of right defies,
Slaves of prejudice, take warning! pause before the nation
dies.
All the land is running riot, laws are trampled in the face,
Negroes must be law-abiding; whites alone the laws debase.
Wrong upon itself is coiling, hissing serpent of the times,
Whites in self-defense are crying, "Shield us from our
people's crimes."
Barbarism fills the country, all for safety take alarm,
From the lowest to the highest, no one now is free from
harm;
Anarchy is rife among us, all resulting from the same,
Gross injustice of the court-room brings the nation into
shame.
Lawlessness is at a premium, woeful penalty it brings,
Relic of the middle ages is the present state of things.
To the winds we now are sowing, and the whirl-wind comes at
length,
Evils cast upon the waters come again with added strength.
The Dark Knight-Batman/White Ninja/Zorro is elated; there
is no homework this week. He can
spend his after school hours playing.
Even though school just started mid-August, DeKalb County Schools are
testing. When asked for comments,
the Dark One/Ninja/Zorro remarked, “No homework is great! Tests are the pits!”
Jury Selection Plan
Overturned
In August, District Court Judge
Nancy Gertner issued a 95-page order challenging the federal jury selection
system in the Boston, Massachusetts district on the grounds that it all but
assures all-white juries. The
jury-selection system is based on frequently out-dated residency lists, which
are compiled through town census forms, rather than tax rolls, voter rolls or
drivers’ license records.
Judge Gertner’s ruling grew out of a death penalty case on which she presides that involves five black men allegedly involved in a number of street crimes, including murder and drug dealing. If the jury selection system remains unchanged, the two defendants charged with murder – Darryl Green and Branden Morris– are likely to be tried before all white or largely white juries.
In issuing her ruling, Judge Gertner cited studies that showed more accurate
jury rolls are kept in wealthier areas, which tend to have a relatively high
response rate from jury summonses.
Poorer areas, where more minorities live, have limited resources; jury
rolls are not well maintained. So,
jury summonses are frequently returned unanswered.
Gertner’s ruling provided a
relatively simple remedy. Resend
jury summonses to each address returned “undeliverable.” If no response after a second summons,
Judge Gertner ordered court administrators to send additional summonses to
another resident in the same ZIP code.
For each summons that is not responded to after a second mailing,
Gertner ordered the courts to eliminate inaccurate addresses from its jury list
to insure these wrong addresses do not recur in other cases.
More than a dozen defense attorneys and civil rights
groups co-signed legal briefs praising Gertner's decision. Chief Judge for the U.S. District Court
in Boston, William Young filed a brief in support of her ruling. U.S. Attorney Michael J. Sullivan
appealed the ruling to the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
On last week, a three-judge panel overturned Gertner’s order. While recognizing the lack of blacks in federal jury pools, the court ruled only the district court can revise jury selection. With no plans to change the system, all white and mostly white juries will continue to be the rule in federal court.
Cronyism: Contests,
Contracts and Court Nominees
In a country whose economy is described as crony
capitalism, cronyism is a sad fact of life. It infects every facet. Too often, success or failure in a career or profession is
based, not on what you know, but on whom you know. From dogcatchers employed by local animal control to the
highest office in the land, there is some aspect of cronyism at work.
Even the ivory towers of academia
are not pristine, according to Portland Community College librarian Alan
Cordle, whose website Foetry has the world of American poetry in an uproar over
charges of cronyism. With research
and attitude, Cordle has named names and exposed the fraudulent operation of
poetry contests, which charge entrants “reading fees” of $20 to $30. Contest winners get book deals and
professorships. With such rewards
at stake, thousands of aspiring poets enter these contests.
According to Cordle, “the judges–
often ‘celebrity poets’ who teach at prestigious schools– routinely award
prizes to their students, friends and lovers.” The victims of this cronyism are the thousands of aspiring
young poets that pay to enter contests that are rigged to pick an insider.
The victims of cronyism practiced
on a grander scale by the Bush administration are US taxpayers. Billions of tax dollars have
disappeared down a black hole in Iraq.
Competition has been virtually non-existent, as the administration
awarded no bid contracts to companies with close ties to Bush insiders. Similar no-bid contracts taint
post-Katrina Gulf Coast reconstruction efforts.
Charges of cronyism plague Bush’s
Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers. Oddly, the harshest criticism has come from Bush’s base–
conservatives. If Miers wins
Senate confirmation and turns out to be a mediocre or incompetent justice, then
the entire country is the victim.
In many respects, US citizens
have come to expect and sadly accept a certain level of cronyism. And, with their acquiescence, it has
ballooned. One would hope at some
point soon, US citizens would collectively reject the high cost of cronyism and
cease being its victims.
Disgruntled says! On Monday, October 10th, the US
observed Columbus Day, a federal holiday.
Some mainstream editorials echoed my sentiments concerning the hypocrisy
of crediting Christopher Columbus (1492) with discovering an occupied
hemisphere. Clearly, the continent
was not lost. More than ludicrous
designating this a federal holiday, public school children are still taught the
myth, which likely appears as a question on standardized tests.
Disgruntled feels: Creepy! This is
a Christian nation, but Halloween is a big day in the USA. As it draws near, things get
creepy. In general, all kinds of
strange things happen in October.
This year, there is the Karl Rove cover-up – an amateurish attempt by
the Bush administration brain to distance himself from the outing of CIA agent
Valerie Plame. Other strange
things include the palatable disdain of some journalists toward Judith Miller,
the New York Times reporter that went to jail “to shield a White House source,”
and Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers is trashed by Bush’s base. More than creepy, with questionable
qualifications, some conspiracy buffs speculate, this could be a stealth
nominee!
Disgruntled
wants to know: Within hours
after another “major speech,” in which George W. Bush said nothing new, except
to mention some heretofore unknown foiled terrorists’ plots to harm the US
and/or its allies abroad, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg held a press
conference to announce a “credible” threat against the city’s subway system. Simultaneously, Homeland Security
played no role in beefing up security and did not participate in the press
conference. Today, the media
labeled the subway threat a hoax.
Was this an elaborate ploy to deflect attention away from other news
that may be damaging to the Bush administration?
Meat: New Cancer
Study Link
The Cancer Research Center of
Hawaii (CRCH) analyzed data from a Multiethnic Cohort Study to investigate
associations between the consumption of meat, other animal products, fat, and
cholesterol and pancreatic cancer risk.
According to their findings, which are published in the current issue of
the Journal National Cancer Institute (JNCI), an increased risk of pancreatic
cancer is associated with intakes of red and processed meat.
On the heels of the European
Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC), which tracked
nearly half a million consumers in ten countries and concluded colorectal risk
increases by 49 percent per 100 grams of daily consumed red meat (pork, beef,
veal and lamb), this new study sounds more alarm bells about meat
consumption. In response to EPIC
and other studies that negatively reflect on meat consumption, the American
Meat Institute Foundation accused researchers of failing to “prove cause and
effect.” Unfortunately, the EPIC
study did not isolate the fat and cholesterol content of meats and food
preparation methods, which have been associated with increased cancer risk,
leaving their methodology vulnerable to attack.
The CRCH study controlled for these variables and
concluded they are unlikely “to contribute to the underlying carcinogenic
mechanism.” Over the seven-year
CRCH study, researchers found 482 incident pancreatic cancers in 190,545 cohort
members. This is significant, as
are the other findings in this study relative to fat and cholesterol in foods
other than red and processed meat.
Annually, nearly 32,000 people are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer,
which is especially lethal with a five-year survival rate of less than five percent. The CRCH study provides consumers with
one more reason to limit their intake of meat.
Visit http://jncicancerspectrum.oxfordjournals.org
and click on the current issue for more about this study. While only subscribers can access the
complete study, non-subscribers can read an online extract, which includes
background, methodology, results and conclusion.
Mailbox: E-Mails, Faxes & Telephone
Calls
E-mail www.truthout.org The
Bush administration's choice for deputy attorney general-- Timothy E. Flanigan
-- has withdrawn his nomination amid mounting questions from Senate Democrats
over his dealings with indicted Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff and over his
role in shaping controversial interrogation policies.
E-mail redazione@uruknet.info
When Torture becomes Policy...By
Mike Whitney...President Bush has made it clear that he will veto the
$435 billion Pentagon appropriations bill, which forbids "cruel, inhuman,
or degrading treatment" of prisoners in US custody, passed by an
overwhelming 90 to 9 majority in the Senate. It was the first flagrant
rejection of administration policy in nearly 5 years. A veto puts the administration on the extreme end of the
policy spectrum and links Bush to the widely reported incidents of human rights
abuses and torture at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and the other American prison
facilities.
E-mail ZLUIS4@aol.com The first
disaster, among many that followed, was having Bush selected president by a 5
to 4 margin in the US Supreme Court. What else could it be called but
"disaster" when the Constitution is thrown out and the loser
installed?
E-mail hanksb@yahoo.com Are you surprised black college enrollment in Florida has fallen under Jeb Bush?
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