Hastie, William Henry

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Hastie, William Henry

November 17, 1904
April 14, 1976

The lawyer and educator William Henry Hastie was considered one of the best legal minds of the twentieth century. He was once suggested for the presidency of Harvard University and twice considered as a nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, reflections of the high regard in which he was held.

Hastie was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, where he spent his early years. His father, a clerk in the United States Pension Office, and his mother, a teacher until his birth, offered him early examples of resistance to discrimination. Rather than ride on segregated streetcars, they provided alternative means for young Hastie to go to school, which sometimes meant walking.

In 1916 the family moved to Washington, D.C., which gave Hastie the opportunity to attend Dunbar High School, the best secondary school in the nation for African Americans. There he excelled athletically and academically, graduating as valedictorian of his class in 1921. He went on to Amherst College, where he again established an excellent athletic and academic record. In addition to winning prizes in mathematics and physics, he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa as a junior, serving as its president during his senior year. In 1925 he graduated magna cum laude as class valedictorian.

After teaching mathematics and general science for two years at the Bordentown Manual Training School in New Jersey, Hastie pursued legal studies at Harvard Law School, where he distinguished himself as a student. He was named to the editorial board of the Harvard Law Review, the second African American to earn that distinction, and was one of its most active editors. Hastie received his LL.B. degree from Harvard in 1930, and he returned there to earn an S.J.D. in 1933.

His academic career closely followed that of his second cousin Charles Hamilton Houston, who had also excelled at Dunbar High, Amherst College, and Harvard Law School. Upon completion of his legal studies, Hastie became a lawyer and went into practice with his father, William, in the Washington, D.C., firm of Houston and Houston. He also became an instructor at Howard University Law School, where Houston was vice dean. Working together, the two men transformed the law school from a night school into a first-class institution. As Robert C. Weaver recalled, "It was during this time that the Houston-Hastie team became the principal mentors of Thurgood Marshall, as well as symbols for, and teachers of, scores of black lawyers, many of whom played a significant role in Civil Rights litigation" (Weaver, 1976, p. 267).

In 1930, the year that Hastie completed his first law degree, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) decided on its legal strategy for fighting against racism: to attack the "soft underbelly" of segregation, the graduate schools. Hastie, Houston, and Marshall became the principal architects of that strategy. In 1933 Hastie was one of the lawyers who argued the first of these cases, Hocutt v. University of North Carolina. Although the case was lost, his performance won him immediate recognition. More important, it laid the groundwork for future cases that would lead to the end of legal segregation in the United States.

As assistant solicitor for the Department of the Interior (1933–1937), Hastie challenged the practice of segregated dining facilities in the department. He also played a role in drafting the Organic Act of 1936, which restructured the governance of the Virgin Islands. In 1937, as a result of his work on the Organic Act, he was appointed federal judge of the U.S. District Court for the Virgin Islands, the first African American to be appointed a federal judge. He left this post in 1939 and returned to Howard Law School as a professor and dean. In 1946 he went back to the Virgin Islands as its first black governor.

In 1940 Hastie was appointed civilian aide to the secretary of war and given the charge of fighting discrimination in the armed services. While he was able to make some progress after a little more than two years, conditions remained intolerable. Hastie decided that he could fight segregation more effectively if he were outside the constraints of an official position, and he resigned in January 1943.

In 1949 Hastie left the position of governor of the Virgin Islands to take a seat as judge on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, where he established a positive reputation. His cases were never overturned, and they often established precedents that were upheld by the Supreme Court. He served the Third Circuit as chief justice for three years before retiring in 1971 and taking a position as senior judge.

Hastie received over twenty honorary degrees, including two from Amherst College (1940, 1960) and one from Harvard (1975). He was the recipient of the NAACP's Spingarn Medal (1943), the Philadelphia Award (1975), and the Washington Bureau Association's Charles Hamilton Houston Medallion of Merit (1976). He was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1952) and was made a lifetime trustee of Amherst College (1962). His alma maters have also honored him with portraits: One, dedicated in 1973, hangs in the Elihu Root Room of the Harvard Law Library; the other, a gift of the Amherst College class of 1992, hangs in Johnson's Chapel at Amherst.