Allan Appel Photo
Prosecutor Kiyana Smith felt that the death of Jack in “Jack and the Beanstock” was hardly accidental. So she led the prosecution team on a charge of murder. Judge Angela Robinson commiserated and counseled her that one of the glories of our legal system is how hard the prosecutor must labor to overcome the presumption of innocence.
The exchange didn’t take place in state court, where Robinson usually presides.
It took place in school, where Kiyana Smith is an eighth-grader and aspiring lawyer.
The exchange took place in the rotunda of the historic Augusta Lewis Troup School on Edgewood Avenue Friday afternoon. The occasion: a moving ceremony to dedicate the school library of the Troup School in honor of trailblazing civil rights attorney and federal judge Constance Baker Motley, who herself graduated from Troup in 1936.
The event was organized on the occasion of February’s Black History Month. English teacher Dolores Marshall and social studies teacher Carolyn Alford both expressed the wish that teaching about local heroes, especially of Motley’s caliber, be not a once-a-year affair but part of the regular curriculum.
“Our kids need a role model from the area,” said Marshall.
Motley truly is. A graduate of Dwight, Troup, Hillhouse, and ultimately Columbia University Law School, Motley made history by arguing key civil rights cases like the admission of James Meredith into the University of Mississippi in 1962. According to her obit in The New York Times of Sept 29, 2005, Motley worked on that case for 18 months before Meredith’s name was ever seen in newspapers.
She was a protégé of Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and became the first black woman to serve on the federal bench.
Speakers told the kids like Kiyana how Motley might have been a hairdresser, her mom’s career suggestion, had it not been for her dream and people helping her.
“There’s nothing wrong with being a hairdresser,” said Judge Robinson. Robinson, too, was inspired by Motley. She became the youngest judge, at age 33, to serve on the Superior Court.
She spoke of how young people need help in pursuing dreams.
In Motley’s case some of that help came from a white businessman who noticed her abilities.
“How many black women lawyers were there in the United States in 1939, when Motley decided to become one?” Robinson asked the kids.
The answer was 39. “If she can do all that, if she can make her dreams come true, what can you do?” Robinson charged up the kids.
The audience then went to the library for the formal ribbon cutting.
Event organizer Bea Dozier Taylor, proprietor of the nearby Walk in Truth and BlackPrint Bookstore, noted that the city has previously honored Motley. The intersection at Edgewood Avenue and Garden Street is Constance Baker Motley corner. There’s also a plaque in the sidewalk between the old Dwight School, which Motley attended, and the police substation.
Somehow, however, for a soft-spoken yet commanding civil rights hero, famous for the careful research of her cases, a library seems most fitting of all.
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