TEN WOMEN IN U.S. LEGAL HISTORY #8: Constance Baker Motley (September 14, 1921 – September 28, 2005) was the first African-American woman to serve as a federal judge. She was born in New Haven, Connecticut in 1921 as the 9th of 12 children, to parents who had emigrated from the Caribbean. Motley earned her law degree from Columbia University School of Law in 1946 and began as a law clerk for the NAACP with Thurgood Marshall. In 1950, Motley wrote the original complaint in the case of Brown v. Board of Education. She was the first African-American woman to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court and won the right for James Meredith to be the first black student to attend the University of Mississippi in 1962 (Meredith v. Fair). Successful in 9 of the 10 cases she argued before the Supreme Court, the 10th was eventually overturned in her favor. Motley was a key legal figure in the Civil Rights Movement, helping to desegregate schools, buses and lunch counters. In 1966, she was named by LBJ to the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, making her the first African-American female federal court judge. In 1978, Motley handed down a breakthrough decision for women sports broadcasters, ruling that a female reporter must be allowed into a Major League Baseball locker room. She held her position with the federal court until she died of heart failure in 2005.