Constance Baker Motley

My father kept his distance from working-class American blacks.

The black population now consists of two distinct classes-the middle class and the poor.

I rejected the notion that my race or sex would bar my success in life.

We have not overthrown the divine right of kings to fall down for the divine right of experts.

I am and always will be a leader.

In early 1993, when I was 12, I was separated from my family as the Sierra Leone civil war, which began two years earlier, came into my life.