The Man Who Killed Jim Crow
Charles Hamilton Houston’s Powerful Civil Rights Legacy
Charles Hamilton Houston, 1895 to 1950, was a prominent Black lawyer, Dean of Howard University Law School, and NAACP’s first legal counsel.
Houston was a key figure in forging legal strategy pathways that led to the end of legalized racial segregation in the U.S. Working closely with his inner sanctum of legal mentees, he helped set the groundwork for the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling through the U.S. Supreme Court where racial segregation in public primary and secondary schools was deemed unconstitutional.
According to historian Patrica Sullivan, author of the book “Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement,” Charles H. Houston, the only child of William and Mary Houston, was born in 1895 in Washington D.C. He attended Dunbar High School, widely considered at the time to be the most prominent Black high school in the nation.
Upon completing high school at age 15, he became one of six valedictorians to graduate from Amherst College in 1915. Houston then taught at Howard University in Washington, D.C. for two years on the heels of World War I. Later he enlisted in the U.S. Army for a tour of duty in Europe as a field artillery second lieutenant.
Having experienced racism and segregation during his armed forces stint, Houston decided to become a legal rights champion for the oppressed. Following his honorable discharge from the army in 1919, he enrolled at Harvard Law School where he earned his Bachelor of Laws in 1922 and a doctorate in 1923.
Houston was a prized student, becoming the first Black editor of the Harvard Law Review. He later studied at the University of Madrid in 1924 before returning to Washington D.C. in 1924 to join his father’s law practice. That same year he accepted a part-time night school teaching assignment at Howard Law School. Over the years he trained nearly a quarter of the nation’s Black law students. Included in this cohort was Thurgood Marshall, who would go on to become a prominent U.S. Supreme Court justice.
Later as dean of the Howard University Law School, he moved the school to a full-time curriculum, eventually leading to Howard’s accreditation by the American Bar Association.
In her book, “Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement, Sullivan notes:
“Houston transformed Howard Law School from a non-accredited night school into a full-time accredited program. Previously, the law school had depended on part-time faculty drawn from practicing lawyers and judges in Washington. The newly accredited law school had five full-time professors, who composed the core group, and six part-time instructors.”
In 1935 Houston left Howard to serve as the first special counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He served in this role until 1940, creating litigation strategies for addressing the prevailing school segregation and racial housing covenants of that time. Over the course of his tenure, Houston played a pivotal role in nearly every civil rights case heard by the Supreme Court between 1930 and Brown v. Board of Education (1954).
Sullivan notes in her book that Walter White, who led the NAACP from 1929 to 1955, and Houston formed an inseparable bond that would have a profound impact on the organization and the budding civil rights movement.
“White would ultimately recruit Houston to lead the NAACP’s new legal office and give him full reign in orchestrating a broad-based challenge to racial discrimination and segregation — high became a cornerstone of the NAACP program. The two were, in some ways, a study in contrasts. Houston possessed a quiet brilliance, was intensely focused on the work and had an open approach to radical political movements committed to racial advancement. White was the maestro of the NAACP, a man of great personal ambition and well-connected to white cultural and political ethics. Born two years apart, both men had traveled a path from secure middle-class upbringings through a gauntlet of American racism and were joined in their commitment to purge the blight of racial injustice and inequality from national life.”
Having died in 1950, Houston would not live to see segregation declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education.
In his honor, Houston was posthumously awarded the NAACP Spingarn Medal in 1950. Additionally, the main building of the Howard University School of Law was named Charles Hamilton Houston Hall in 1958.
Bonus Book to Read On Charles Houston
Groundwork: Charles Hamilton Houston and the Struggle for Civil Rights by Glenna Rae McNeil