Charles Hamilton Houston
Image source: http://chhlawinstitute.org/images/CharlesHamiltonHouston.jpg
Charles Hamilton Houston was born on September 3, 1895 in Washington, DC. Houston started at Dunbar High school and then matriculated to Amherst College in 1911. He was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa honor society,and graduated as valedictorian in 1915. He returned to DC to teach at Howard University. As the US entered World War I, Houston joined the then racially segregated U. S. Army as an officer and was sent to France. He returned to the US in 1919, and began attending Harvard Law School. As a member of the Harvard Law Review, Houston became the review's first African American editor; he graduated Harvard cum laude.
Houston is the brains behind the strategy to end Jim Crow by first attacking unequal education. By demonstrating the failure of states to even try to live up to the 1896 rule of "separate but equal," Houston hoped to finally overturn the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling that had given birth to that phrase.
(My favorite part-as if you asked) Houston designed a strategy of attacking segregation in law schools — forcing states to either create costly parallel law schools or integrate the existing ones. The strategy had hidden benefits: since law students were predominantly male, Houston sought to neutralize the age-old argument that allowing blacks to attend white institutions would lead to miscegenation, or "race-mixing". He also reasoned that judges deciding the cases might be more sympathetic to plaintiffs who were pursuing careers in law. Finally, by challenging segregation in graduate schools, the NAACP lawyers would bypass the inflammatory issue of miscegenation among young children.
Image source: http://www.law.harvard.edu/news/images-cms/king.jpg
Find out more when you read the rest.
For his significant role dismantling Jim Crow laws, Houston became known as "the man who killed Jim Crow."
[The] Negro lawyer must be trained as a social engineer and group interpreter. Due to the Negro's social and political condition . . . the Negro lawyer must be prepared to anticipate, guide and interpret his group advancement. . . . [Moreover, he must act as] business advisor . . . for the protection of the scattered resources possessed or controlled by the group. . . . He must provide more ways and means for holding within the group the income now flowing through it.
In 1924 he began to teach part time at Howard University School of Law, then a part-time night school. In 1929, the Howard University Trustees recreated Howard University School of law as a full-time day school and put Houston in charge as the Resident Vice-Dean. Since Houston had the responsibilities of a dean he was dean in all but title. During Houston's six year tenure, he oversaw the process that led to the school being accredited by the American Bar Association and meeting the standards for being admitted to the the Association of American Law Schools.Additionally, Howard Law had become a premiere law school for African American training almost a quarter of the nation's black law students. Houston was also a mentor to Thurgood Marshall, who argued Brown v. Board of Education and was later appointed to the Supreme Court.
(My favorite part-as if you asked) Houston designed a strategy of attacking segregation in law schools — forcing states to either create costly parallel law schools or integrate the existing ones. The strategy had hidden benefits: since law students were predominantly male, Houston sought to neutralize the age-old argument that allowing blacks to attend white institutions would lead to miscegenation, or "race-mixing". He also reasoned that judges deciding the cases might be more sympathetic to plaintiffs who were pursuing careers in law. Finally, by challenging segregation in graduate schools, the NAACP lawyers would bypass the inflammatory issue of miscegenation among young children.
Image source: http://www.law.harvard.edu/news/images-cms/king.jpg
Find out more when you read the rest.
For his significant role dismantling Jim Crow laws, Houston became known as "the man who killed Jim Crow."
While you're clicking, check out this clip where Linda Brown explains the background of the landmark case:
Houston played a role in nearly every civil rights case before the Supreme Court between 1930 & 1950. He argued several cases before the Supreme Court including:
Hollins v. Oklahoma, 295 U.S. 394 (1935)
Hale v. Kentucky, 303 U.S. 613 (1938)
Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, 305 U.S. 337 (1938)
Steele v. Louisville & Nashville RR, 323 U.S. 192 (1944)
Tunstall v. Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen & Enginemen, 323 U.S. 210 (1944)
Hurd v. Hodge, 334 U.S. 24 (1948)
Houston passed away in 1950, 4 years before his strategy to end separate but equal became a valid constitutional principle. Houston's work did not go unnoticed. In 1950, Houston was posthumously awarded the NAACP's Spingarn Medal. In 1958, the main building of the Howard University School of Law was dedicated as Charles Hamilton Houston Hall.
Image source: http://www.naacp.org/about/history/houston.jpg
"This fight for equality of educational opportunity (was) not an isolated struggle. All our struggles must tie in together and support one another. . .We must remain on the alert and push the struggle farther with all our might."
The Charles Houston Bar Association and the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School contribute to carrying on Houston's legacy and bear his namesake. In addition, there is a professorship at Harvard Law named after him; Elena Kagan, formerly the Dean of Harvard Law School and now a SCOTUS Justice nominee, was also the Charles Hamilton Houston Professor of Law.
In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Charles Hamilton Houston on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans. Houston was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha. Houston's credo guides the Howard University School of Law's mission to this day:
"A lawyer's either a social engineer or he's a parasite on society." ... A social engineer was a highly skilled, perceptive, sensitive lawyer who understood the Constitution of the United States and knew how to explore its uses in the solving of "problems of . . . local communities" and in "bettering conditions of the underprivileged citizens."
Bonus! Check out this footage which Thurgood Marshall used as an exhibit in Brown. It was produced by Houston(I dont think the background music is original).
HUSL Today Salutes Charles Hamilton Houston!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment