US Judge Constance Baker Motley, one of the lawyers for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) during the Brown era, explores the power of the legal concepts of equality and the legal process to improve America. “Although it is still generating litigation," she writes, "the Brown case and its progeny have transformed American society in the second half of the 20th century.”

As a lawyer, Judge Motley won many civil rights battles in the courtroom including the case leading to desegregation of the University of Mississippi by James Meredith in 1962. In 1964 she was elected to the New York state senate, and in 1965 became the first woman president of a Manhattan borough. In 1966 she was appointed as a judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Judge Motley was the District’s chief judge from 1982 until 1986 when she became a senior judge.