... 2005, Constance Baker Motley, Senior Judge on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, died at age 84 of congestive heart failure. Daughter of emigrants from the West Indies, in 1944 she became the 1st African-American woman accepted at Columbia Law School, from which she was graduated in 1946. Soon after she began to work for the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. During her 16 years of practice there she "was the only woman on the legal team in the historic legal challenge to school segregation in Brown v. Board of Education," and, as depicted at left, also served as "lead counsel for James Meredith in his successful battle to gain admission to University of Mississippi." Motley won 9 of the 10 cases she argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. Eventually she entered city and state politics in New York. In 1966, she became the 1st African-American woman federal district judge; 20 years later, the 1st woman Chief Judge in New York's Southern District.... 1961, the United Arab Republic came to an end when the military staged a coup in Damascus. The UAR had been formed on Feb. 1, 1958, as a union of Syria and Egypt; the latter country kept the name for another 10 years, then became the Arab Republic of Egypt on Sept. 2, 1971.
