This impeccably researched biography traces the career of an overlooked hero of the Civil Rights Movement. From her modest beginnings in New Haven to her involvement in the high-profile legal cases of the 1950s and ’60s that were instrumental in abolishing Jim Crow—among them Brown vs. Board of Education—Motley’s intelligence and diligence are presented with a scholarly precision worthy of the great judge. The chapter on the fight to admit James Meredith to the University of Mississippi is both unsettling and riveting. Brown-Nagin’s biography will win new admirers for the woman once deemed just as important as MLK in acquiring civil rights for African-Americans.

(BH)