Charles Hamilton Houston (September 3, 1895 – April 22, 1950) was an
African AmericanAfrican Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have origins in any of the black populations of Africa. In the United States, the terms are generally used for Americans with at least partial Sub-Saharan African ancestry...
lawyerA lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person licensed to practice law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain stability, and deliver...
, Dean of
Howard UniversityHoward University is a federally chartered, non-profit, private, coeducational, nonsectarian, historically black university located in Washington, D.C., United States....
Law School and NAACP Litigation Director who played a significant role in dismantling the
Jim Crow lawsThe Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly "separate but equal" status for black Americans...
and trained future Supreme Court justice
Thurgood MarshallThurgood Marshall was an American jurist and the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States. Before becoming a judge, he was a lawyer who was best remembered for his high success rate in arguing before the Supreme Court and for the victory in Brown v. Board of...
.
Houston was born in Washington, D.C. His father worked as a lawyer. Houston started at
Amherst CollegeAmherst College is a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts, USA. Founded in 1821, it is the third oldest college in Massachusetts, and has been coeducational since 1975...
in 1911, was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa honor society, and graduated as valedictorian in 1915.
Charles Hamilton Houston (September 3, 1895 – April 22, 1950) was an
African AmericanAfrican Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have origins in any of the black populations of Africa. In the United States, the terms are generally used for Americans with at least partial Sub-Saharan African ancestry...
lawyerA lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person licensed to practice law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain stability, and deliver...
, Dean of
Howard UniversityHoward University is a federally chartered, non-profit, private, coeducational, nonsectarian, historically black university located in Washington, D.C., United States....
Law School and NAACP Litigation Director who played a significant role in dismantling the
Jim Crow lawsThe Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly "separate but equal" status for black Americans...
and trained future Supreme Court justice
Thurgood MarshallThurgood Marshall was an American jurist and the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States. Before becoming a judge, he was a lawyer who was best remembered for his high success rate in arguing before the Supreme Court and for the victory in Brown v. Board of...
.
Houston was born in Washington, D.C. His father worked as a lawyer. Houston started at
Amherst CollegeAmherst College is a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts, USA. Founded in 1821, it is the third oldest college in Massachusetts, and has been coeducational since 1975...
in 1911, 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 IWorld War I , also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Wars, was a global military conflict which involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance...
, Houston joined the then
racially segregatedRacial segregation is the separation of different racial groups in daily life, such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a washroom, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home. Segregation may be mandated by law or exist through social...
U. S. Army as an officer and was sent to France. He returned to the US in 1919, and began attending
Harvard Law SchoolHarvard Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is the oldest continually-operating law school in the United States and is home to the largest academic law library in the world. HLS typically ranks among the top law...
. He was a member of the
Harvard Law ReviewThe Harvard Law Review is a journal of legal scholarship published by an independent student group at Harvard Law School.-Overview:The Review is one of the most cited law reviews in the United States. It is published monthly from November through June, with the November issue dedicated to covering...
and graduated Harvard cum laude.
Going on to become known as "The Man Who Killed Jim Crow." he played a role in nearly every civil rights case before the
Supreme CourtThe Supreme Court of the United States is the highest judicial body in the United States, and leads the federal judiciary. It consists of the Chief Justice of the United States and eight Associate Justices, who are nominated by the President and confirmed with the "advice and consent" of the Senate...
between 1930 and
Brown v. Board of EducationBrown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 , was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court, which overturned earlier rulings going back to Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, by declaring that state laws that established separate public schools for black and white students denied...
(1954). Houston's plan to attack and defeat Jim Crow
segregationRacial segregation is the separation of different racial groups in daily life, such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a washroom, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home. Segregation may be mandated by law or exist through social...
by demonstrating the inequality in the "
separate but equalSeparate but equal is a set phrase that was commonly used in the United States to describe systems of segregation giving different "colored only" facilities or services for blacks, with the declaration that the quality of each group's public facilities were to remain equal...
" doctrine from the Supreme Court's
Plessy v. FergusonPlessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 , is a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in the jurisprudence of the United States, upholding the constitutionality of racial segregation even in public accommodations , under the doctrine of "separate but equal".The decision was handed down by a vote of 7 to 1...
decision as it pertained to public education in the United States was the masterstroke that brought about the landmark
Brown decision.
Legacy
Houston was posthumously awarded the NAACP's
Spingarn MedalThe Spingarn Medal is awarded annually by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People for outstanding achievement by an African American....
in 1950 and, in 1958, the main building of the Howard University School of Law was dedicated as
Charles Hamilton Houston Hall. His importance became more broadly known through the success of Thurgood Marshall and after the 1983 publication of Genna Rae McNeil's
Groundwork: Charles Hamilton Houston and the Struggle for Civil Rights.
Houston is the person for whom the Charles Houston Bar Association and the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School -- which opened in the fall of 2005 -- are named. In addition, there is a professorship at Harvard Law named after him;
Elena KaganElena Kagan is the Solicitor General of the United States. She is the first woman to hold that office, having been nominated by President Barack Obama on January 26, 2009, and confirmed by the U.S. Senate on March 19, 2009. Kagan was formerly dean of Harvard Law School and Charles Hamilton...
, formerly the Dean of
Harvard Law SchoolHarvard Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is the oldest continually-operating law school in the United States and is home to the largest academic law library in the world. HLS typically ranks among the top law...
and now the
United States Solicitor GeneralThe United States Solicitor General is the person appointed to represent the Government of the United States before the Supreme Court of the United States. Currently, the Solicitor General is Elena Kagan, who was confirmed by the United States Senate on March 19, 2009.The Solicitor General...
, was also the Charles Hamilton Houston Professor of Law.
Houston was a member of
Alpha Phi AlphaAlpha Phi Alpha is the first intercollegiate fraternity established by African Americans. Founded on December 4, 1906, on the campus of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, Alpha Phi Alpha has initiated over 185,000 men into the organization and has been open to men of all races since 1940...
, the first intercollegiate
Greek-letterThe Greek alphabet is a set of twenty-four letters that has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BCE. It is the first and oldest alphabet in the narrow sense that it notes each vowel and consonant with a separate symbol. It is as such in continuous use to...
fraternityFraternities and sororities are fraternal social organizations for undergraduate students. In English, the term refers mainly to such organizations at colleges and universities in North America, although it is also applied to analogous European groups also known as corporations...
established for African Americans.
In 2002, scholar
Molefi Kete AsanteMolefi Kete Asante is a contemporary and progressive American scholar in the field of African studies and African American Studies. He is currently Professor in the Department of African American Studies at Temple University, where he founded the first PhD program in African American Studies...
listed Charles Hamilton Houston on his list of
100 Greatest African Americans100 Greatest African Americans is a biographical dictionary of the one hundred historically greatest African Americans, as assessed by Molefi Kete Asante in 2002.-Criteria:Asante used five factors in establishing the list:...
.
Cases argued before the Supreme Court
External links