Constance Baker Motley Preserve

This Chester site served as Judge Motley’s seasonal home from 1965-2005, used for weekends, vacations, and family gatherings. After her death, the house was sold privately, and her adjacent property purchased by the Chester Land Trust who established this nature preserve. In 2020, the Trust built the scenic “Little Rock Nine” hiking trail, named for one of her most important school desegregation cases.

From the 1950s through the early 1960s, Motley played a pivotal role in the fight to end racial segregation in America. As the NAACP’s chief legal enforcer of the 1954 Brown V. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling that outlawed segregated public schools, Motley led the litigation that integrated the Universities of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, among others, while bringing 200 additional school cases to southern courtrooms across 11 states. She also provided critical legal aid to Civil Rights leaders—Rosa Parks (Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955), John Lewis (Mississippi Freedom Riders, 1961) and Martin Luther King (Birmingham Children’s March, 1963).

The first African American woman to argue before the US Supreme Court, Motley successfully did so ten times. Her legal skills and enduring achievements to dismantle Jim Crow in America make her one of the 20th century’s most accomplished civil rights leaders.

In an impressive second career, Motley made history again with pathbreaking elected positions as New York’s first Black female state Senator (1964), first Black female Manhattan Borough Council President (1965), and in 1966, the first Black female federal judge. She was appointed by President Lyndon Johnson, and held the position for 39 years. In 1982, she rose to become Chief Judge. Her landmark federal rulings for women, workers and prisoners embodied her belief in equal justice under law, the title of her 1989 autobiography.

The Chester Historical Society offers a permanent exhibit about Motley and other related resources in its Museum. In 2022, a definitive biography of her life—Civil Rights Queen—was published; and in 2024, the US Postal Service honored Motley with a first-class, “forever” stamp in the Black Heritage series.