Book Review: Brown-Nagin, Tomiko. 2022. Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality. New York: Pantheon Books. 497 pp. $30.00 (cloth).

Biographies that intersect with major historical movements often focus on publicly celebrated figures rather than those whose labors are critically important yet far less known. Tomiko Brown-Nagin’s biography of Constance Baker Motley is a notable exception to that pattern. Motley was an essential contributor to the modern Civil Rights Movement as a lawyer working within the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) and, later, as a New York State Senator and U.S. District Court judge for the Southern District of New York. In her respective roles as litigator, advocate, lawmaker, and judge, Motley’s work remained overshadowed by such luminaries as Thurgood Marshall, Martin Luther King Jr., and Roy Wilkins. However, Motley contributed much of the legal groundwork that enabled these luminaries and others to rise to public prominence and for her to gain national recognition for providing Black Americans with greater access to educational opportunities.