University of Houston

University of Houston at Houston, Tex.; coeducational; est. 1927 as a junior college, became a four-year institution in 1934, became a state-supported university in 1963. Campuses at Clear Lake, Victoria, and downtown Houston were added in the 1970s. The school has an affiliation with NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center.

Houston City and port in se Texas, USA, connected to the Gulf of Mexico by the Houston Ship Canal. Founded in 1836, it was capital of the Republic of Texas (1837–39, 1842–45). Its greatest growth came after the building of the canal (1912–14), as the coastal oil fields provided a rich source of income and Houston developed as a deep-water port. The largest city in the state, it is a major cultural centre with five universities, a symphony orchestra, and many art galleries and museums. It is also a leading industrial, commercial, and financial centre, with vast oil refineries and a massive petrochemical complex. Industries: space research (the Johnson Space Center is nearby), shipbuilding, meat-packing, electronics, chemicals, brewing, sugar and rice processing, synthetic rubber, printing and publishing. Pop. (2000) 1,953,631.

Houston, Charles Hamilton (b. Washington, D.C., 3 Sept. 1895; d. Washington, D.C., 22 Apr. 1950), lawyer and educator. Houston attended Amherst college and Harvard Law School, where he became the first African‐American member of the Harvard Law Review in 1921. In 1924 he joined his father's law practice and the law faculty at Howard University, where he was academic dean from 1929 to 1935. As dean, Houston transformed the law school from a traditional part‐time operation into a full‐time school with a focus on civil rights law. Houston inspired many of his students, including Thurgood Marshall, to devote substantial parts of their careers to civil rights law. Houston also worked closely with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and in 1935 he joined the staff of the NAACP in New York as its counsel. Initially Houston was paid from a grant from the American Fund for Public Service, which agreed to support a lawyer to plan litigation challenging segregation in education, transportation, and voting. Houston concentrated on segregation in universities and won the first major case in this campaign in *Missouri ex rel Gaines v. Canada (1938). Houston left his position at the NAACP in 1939, returning to Washington because of illness and family obligations. He remained active as an adviser to the NAACP, and his legal practice included much civil rights work. His challenge to the exclusion of African‐Americans from labor unions persuaded the Supreme Court to adopt the rule that unions had a “duty of fair representation” to all workers even if they excluded those workers from membership (Steele v. Louisville & Nashville Railroad Co., 1944).

Mark V. Tushnet