"The Trials of Constance Baker Motley" with Joel Motley
Friday, May 7, 2021
9:00 am – 10:00 am EDT/GMT-4 Online Event
9 am New York l 3 pm Vienna
OSUN and the Val-Kill Partnership invite network members to attend a discussion with Joel Motley, financier, filmmaker, and Chairman Emeritus of the Board of Human Rights Watch, as part of the Tomorrow Is Now Virtual Discussion Series.
The series highlights the relevance of Eleanor Roosevelt's legacy in today's crises and is hosted by Manuela Roosevelt, chair of the Eleanor Roosevelt, Val-Kill Partnership.
Joel Motley will screen and discuss the award-winning film on his mother, The Trials of Constance Baker Motley, profiling one of the lesser-known, yet most influential players of the civil rights movement.
At the height of the civil rights movement, Constance Baker Motley joined the NAACP’s legal team. The only woman in the group, she left her husband and infant son in New York for weeks at a time to represent the NAACP in Southern courts. The first female Black lawyer Southern judges and juries had seen, she stunned them by winning case after case—gaining the right for Black students to enter Ole Miss, the University of Georgia, and Clemson College.
After the assassination of one of her closest friends, Motley returned to New York—and went on to become the first Black woman NY State Senator, the first Black Woman Manhattan Borough President, and, with the backing of Lyndon Johnson, the first Black woman named to a federal judgeship.
With archival footage and narration in Motley’s own voice, The Trials of Constance Baker Motley tells the story of a civil rights leader who met prejudice and danger with elegance and humor.
The last book Eleanor Roosevelt authored, Tomorrow Is Now, published posthumously in 1962, encapsulates a message that is relevant to all of us today: "It is today that we must create the world of the future."
Join via Zoom.
Website: https://bard.zoom.us/j/86962660124?pwd=bjFmVVo0RHlJRkNwcUlPTTdRTGRCdz09