Equal Justice Society Selects Claudia Peña
as 2008-09 Judge Constance Baker
Motley Civil Rights Fellow

The Equal Justice Society on March 20, 2008, announced that it selected Claudia Peña of San Francisco as the third Judge Constance Baker Motley Civil Rights Fellow.

Peña will start the one-year fellowship with EJS in the fall of 2008 after graduating in May from UCLA School of Law, where she serves as vice president of the Student Bar Association and chair of the Inter-Org Senate.

"Claudia is one of the rising stars in our community," said EJS board chair Anthony Solana, Jr. "Her dedication and commitment to serving the underprivileged is unparalleled and I'm elated that she will be joining the EJS family."

The fellowship, designed to transform anti-discrimination law and policy by nurturing the talents of a new generation of progressive lawyers, is named in honor of Judge Constance Baker Motley, the first African American woman on the federal bench.

In addition to attending law school, Peña currently works as the student coordinator of the Prisoner Reentry Initiative, which is a collaboration between UCLA's Critical Race Studies and A New Way of Life, a non-profit organization in Watts, Calif., providing housing and reentry support to formerly incarcerated women and their children.

She is an Academy Scholar for UCLA's Law Fellows Program and was previously a legal intern for the Johannesburg, South Africa-based Lawyers for Human Rights, a law clerk for the firm of Moreno, Becerra & Casillas and a legal intern for the Badil Center for Refugee Rights in Bethlehem, Palestine.

Her work experience also includes serving as the interim director for student diversity programs at Mills College and as a youth advocate at the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights.

Peña received her B.A. in Sociology from Mills College and is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including: Hernandez Stern Scholarship, Foley Minority Scholarship, Morrison and Forrester Diversity Scholarship, Palladium Award at Mills College, Mills College Phenomenal Woman Award and Latinos Unidos Scholar.

Peña will be EJS's third Motley Fellow, following current Fellow Sara Jackson and Nicholas Espíritu.

"Judge Motley played a major role in the ongoing effort to end racial injustice in this country," said Eva Paterson, EJS president. "Her incredible life is not only marked by how many barriers she broke on behalf of women and Black Americans, but also the considerable legal skills and talents she brought to winning Brown v. Board and to the numerous cases she heard on the bench." Judge Motley passed away in 2005.

The Equal Justice Society (www.equaljusticesociety.org) is a national advocacy organization that promotes social justice and racial equality through the strategic use of law and public policy, communication and the arts, and alliance building. As heirs of the innovative legal and political strategists of Brown v. Board of Education, the organization works to reshape jurisprudence to ensure that the rights of all are expanded, rather than diminished, by courts and policy makers.

More information on the Motley Fellowship can also be found at www.motleyfellow.org.

About Constance Baker Motley

Judge Motley (September 14, 1921-September 28, 2005) was an African American civil rights activist, lawyer, judge, and state senator. Upon hearing of the founding of the Equal Justice Society, Judge Motley stated, "Now I can relax."

In her fifty-plus years as a jurist, Motley had a major impact on ending racial discrimination. As the NAACP Legal Defense Fund's associate counsel, she participated in writing the briefs for Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark Supreme Court decision that ended school segregation. From 1961 to 1964, Motley won nine of the 10 civil rights cases she argued before the Court, including James Meredith's successful suit to attend the University of Mississippi.

She went on to shatter other gender and race barriers as the first African American woman elected to the New York state senate in 1964 and to the Manhattan borough presidency in 1965.

Appointed to a judgeship for the Southern District of New York in 1966, she became the first African American woman on the federal bench and, in 1982, the first African American woman to serve as chief judge. She assumed senior judge status in 1986, and in 2001, President Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Citizens' Medal in recognition of her achievements and service to the nation.

Motley was born in New Haven, Conn., the ninth of twelve children born to immigrants from the Caribbean island of Nevis. Her mother was the founder of the New Haven chapter of the NAACP.

With financial help from a local philanthropist, she initially attended Fisk University, a historically Black college in Tennessee, before deciding to transfer to the integrated New York University.

After graduating from New York University in 1943, Motley took a well-paying job with a wartime agency that aided the dependents of servicemen. A year later, she turned down a promotion in order to attend Columbia Law School, leading her supervisor to say: "That's the dumbest thing I ever heard, a complete waste of time. Women don't get anywhere in the law."

While still a law student at Columbia, Motley met Thurgood Marshall, then the NAACP legal director, who offered her a job as a law clerk in the organization's New York office. After receiving her law degree in 1946, Motley became a full-fledged member of the NAACP legal staff.