Legal History
Charles Hamilton Houston as an army officer during World War I.
rights law, which was an area that most law schools did not teach.
THE STRATEGY THAT DEFEATED JIM CROW He formulated the brilliant strategy which helped defeat Jim Crow. His strategy was that he felt that legalized segregation in the United States, sanctioned by the Supreme Court’s 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision, could be struck down through demonstrating the inequality of the “separate but equal” doctrine in public education. Under his leadership, the NAACP took on and won cases that showed the clear economic disparities in every Southern state and among school districts in their spending on individual students and teacher salaries depending on whether the schools were Black or White. He produced films that documented these stark differences.
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Houston started his litigation in higher education with graduate schools, colleges, and then later with public schools. He attacked segregation in law schools by forc-
Annual 2013 Edition
• He was responsible for establishing a relationship between Howard Law School and his alma mater Harvard Law School. • He served as Vice-Dean of Howard Law School from 1929 to 1935. During his tenure in this position, Howard trained nearly one-fourth of the nation’s Black law students at that time. • In 1950, he died of a heart attack. • Four years after his death, Thurgood Marshall argued the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision. This decision, which outlawed segregation in public schools, validated Houston’s strategy. • Most significantly, this opinion was far reaching because it went well beyond public education ing states to either create separate and parallel law schools for Black students (which would be costly and impractical to do for one or a few students), or otherwise integrate their current schools. He felt that since law schools were made up primarily of male students, then this would calm fears of miscegenation or mixing between the Black and White races. He also felt that there would be less opposition and a threat to the status quo when seeking the admission of a few students to a few graduate level institutions, as opposed to seeking integration for younger elementary school students which would have a more widespread impact. Attorney Houston believed that if the NAACP could build several smaller victories in the courts in the area of education, then there would be enough case precedents established, which would encourage the Supreme Court to declare all forms of segregation in the area of education unconstitutional.
Charles Hamilton Houston (right) with Thurgood Marshall (left) and Donald Murray (middle).
and helped end segregation in all forms across the country. • Years later, Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing act of 1968 which served to put a final end to the Jim Crow legal sanctions. • After his death, he was awarded the NAACP’s Springarn Medal. • In 1958, the Howard University School of Law dedicated its main building to him by naming it the Charles Hamilton Houston Hall. “The hate and scorn showered on us Negro officers by our fellow Americans convinced me that there was no sense in my dying for a world ruled by them. I made up my mind that if I got through this war I would study law and use my time fighting for men who could not strike back.” – Charles Hamilton Houston
Did you know? Harvard Law School has a law professorship named in his honor, which was held by former Dean Elena Kagan, who now serves as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.